Prelude76 Posted May 24, 2003 Share Posted May 24, 2003 ok, i have "/" partition at 1gig, "/usr/" at 3gig, and /home at 7gig and 500mb for swapi'm running out of room fast in "/" partiiton. its using 730mb, and half of that is the /var folder. can i trim that folder? what's it for? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maxlor Posted May 24, 2003 Share Posted May 24, 2003 In /var there's mostly logs and spool directories, although some distros are insane enough to install other crap in there. Use du -h --max-depth=1 /var to find out which directory it is that's taking up all the space. If it's the log directories, You can delete those files ending in .gz or .bz2 and those having a number in their filename (eg "sendmail.1.st" - the main logfile is called sendmail.st"). If you have a big single file that's still being logged to, don't delete it but empty it by typing echo '' > biglogfile.log (The reason is that some programs don't create the logfile if it's not already there but complain instead).If it's not the log files, have a look around and tell us what's taking up all the space (oh, and be specific - "/var's taking up a lot of space" doesn't cut it) and we'll tell you whether it's save to delete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 24, 2003 Share Posted May 24, 2003 Probably your log files like Maxlor indicated ! I´m guessing you do not leave your computer ¨ON¨ 24/7. Have a look at ¨anacron¨ that rotates the log-files for you if the ¨cron-job¨ did not run at night !See the Tips for Starters page 1. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 24, 2003 Share Posted May 24, 2003 Logs are certainly a very likely suspect.I don't know for sure about SuSE but in RedHat, /var is not only for logs.The system will use the /var partition to store log, cache, and temporary files.Are you running an apache webserver (httpd)?/var/www/html is generally where any files would be kept for a webserver too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 ok, trimmed up the log files, but SuSE has most of disk space usage in /opt/ directory. since i never made an /opt/ partition, it throws it into "/" partition, along with /var, which explains why its nearly 75% full already. seems like when i install some rpms i get from net, like Mozilla 1.3 for example, it loads it into /opt/, but i dont know if its just a temporary storage or if it loads it elsewhere. its gonna take me a while to get a handle of this, i'm so used to c:/program files/ and it seems like som programs go to /usr/bin, some to /usr/local/bin, some to /usr/x11 and now some into /opt/ directory. geez, this OS really is written by geeks does anyone know why SuSE has /opt/ directory, what goes into it, and why programs go into /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, or /usr/x11 ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Prelude,The only thing I have in my /opt is the acrobat reader, I do not know what SuSE does with it.The /usr/bin directory holds most of the executables for the programs installed by the distro at install./usr/local/bin is where most programs go that you add later yourself and are not specific for your distro./usr/x11 stores all that has to do with your X configuration.( Note: the policy is not as thight as I tell here above ! )Comming back to your /var:The /var directory is for Variable data. Data files that are continually being re-created or updated. So it does change in size a lot.The two main subdirectories are /log /cache and /spool. /var/spool is for the temp stroring of the printing queue, cups, the internal mail-spool, postfix , the regular jobs like cron and anacron. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 does anyone know why SuSE has /opt/ directory, what goes into it, and why programs go into /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, or /usr/x11 ?I don't know why SuSE would make use of /opt in the way it does because that directory's usage has been deprecated and most modern *nixes don't make use of it; except SuSE. If you are concerned about it's growth, maybe create another partition and mount it into /opt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 One aspect of SuSE that may result in confusion (and controversy among the Linux community) involves the default location for installing software. SuSE puts many programs in the /opt directory instead of the more common /usr. As a result, users familiar with other Linux distributions have to be careful to allocate enough disk space to the partition containing the /opt directory. SuSE's /opt preference will be more familiar to Solaris administrators, but it has fallen out of favor among most Linux admins. Technically, it's an acceptable way to partition and manage a Linux system, but the fact that it may take some by surprise is a negative mark. Few things are more frustrating to an admin than incurring installation problems because of incompatible directory structures.found this in a PC Mag archive. looks like i'll have to make an /opt partition, maybe about 2 gig or so. Bruno, might wanna edit your info on partition sizes in "Tips for Linux starters". SuSE users should have a fairly large /opt partition, as this is where most 3rd party apps get installed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Thanks Prelude, Looks like The Tips need permanent updating, lucky for me that I can just edit this kind of things in on a later date. If you guys keep feeding me information, someday The Tips might even get close to perfect. ;)I´ll edit your info in tonight. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 under /opt for SuSE 8.2 ProI have the following foldersOpenOffice.orgcxoffice (CrossOver)gnomegnome2kde3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 what got me thinking about this /opt was that i installed a newer build of mozilla and evolution, and both got put into /opt. stuff from the CDs gets put into /usr area, and anything i download gets put into /opt. i also have gnome, kde, openoffice in there too. it explains why my root "/" is so overfull question. i'm gonna lob 2 gigs from /home and make an /opt folder. will the stuff move into there automatically, or am i looking at a reinstall? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 question. i'm gonna lob 2 gigs from /home and make an /opt folder. will the stuff move into there automatically, or am i looking at a reinstall?No. You will have to change the mount points in your /etc/fstab file to mount the new partition.Are you going to use Linux fdisk to create your Linux partition or does SuSE have a graphical partition manager?If you do use command line fdisk then you can create the partition and then make the format the partition with a file system using the command /sbin/mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hdax where x is your partition number. Make sure you issue the command init 1 first to take you into safe mode to do this.You will want to make a temporary mount point so create a directory like this:mkdir /temp_optthen mount the partition like so:mount /dev/hdax /temp_optUsing Bruno's tip about copying things, copy the /opt directory to /temp_opt. Then rename the /opt directory to say /opt_old. At this point you will have /opt_old and /temp_opt. Rename /temp_opt to /opt. Edit your /etc/fstab file and add this line:LABEL=/opt /opt ext3 defaults 1 2When you reboot, then your /opt directory will be using the files copied from the /opt_old now sitting in the new partition. You can then delete /opt_old. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted May 26, 2003 Author Share Posted May 26, 2003 yeah, suse has a graphical partition manager, so i'll see what it can handle. if it fails, i'll try the konsole /etc/fstab way. thanks, peachy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 26, 2003 Share Posted May 26, 2003 Don't do the renaming commands within the GUI. There may be processes running that depend on files in /opt. You want to be in runlevel 1. So, init 1, first! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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