/var partition full !

sebgarden · Guru Joined: 21 Dec 2002 Posts: 353

Hi, I have a separated var partition (2GB), which is full and consequently, I can't emerge anything else. Unfortunately, I didn't emerged evms before. So what can I do ? I think of fstab with some cut/copy to minimize an other partition, but is there anyway to reduce the /var occupied place ?

Regards,
Sébastien.

slartibartfasz · Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 7:20 pm Post subject:

any big logfiles there - /var/log... ?

u cannot simply change the size of a partition in fstab, thats more complex...
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doug-x07 · Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 7:21 pm Post subject:

Clean out /var/tmp/portage and you should retrieve quite a bit of space on your partition.
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brain · Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 7:25 pm Post subject:

Do you have another hard drive available? Probably the simplest thing to do would be to temporarily attach another disk, give it a partition and copy your /var info over to it (use cp -p).

After this, change your fstab to point /var to your new disk.

Do what you need to fix your space issue, and do the reverse as above. I've used this little trick more than once to fix space issues :wink:

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sebgarden · Guru Joined: 21 Dec 2002 Posts: 353

OK, I'll try to clean out the /var/tmp/portage. As I have a laptop, I cannot attach a new hard drive so simply. Just a precision, evms can resize partitions, isn't it ?

Regards,
Sébastien.

slartibartfasz · Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 7:51 pm Post subject:

compu-tom · Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 10:01 pm Post subject:

Even if it is not the very best solution, you could simply symlink /var/tmp/portage and|or /usr/portage (where a lot of tar archives live) on another partition. That is

sebgarden · Guru Joined: 21 Dec 2002 Posts: 353

OK, thank you doug-x07.
I've cleaned out /var/tmp/portage and I've yet 1,9 GB free. I emerged evms and I now emerge xfree, which failed to compile before, supposingly because I had not enough space on /var. But evms (dated 01.15.2003 !, surely because I have enabled ~arch) need a version of ioctl which is not in the kernel 2.4.19r10. And I need xfs support. So one question, why do the gentoo sources not include xfs support ?

I have xfs in my use variables but if I emerge the last Gentoo-sources with make oldconfig, will it include xfs support ?

Regards,
Sébastien.

schleppy · n00b Joined: 22 Nov 2002 Posts: 16

I think all you have to do is temporarily set the portage_tmpdir variable. Do:

export PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/anywhere/it/fits

I did that to build java when i had a separate partition for /var that was too small. Who knew I'd ever need more than 2 gigs for /var. go figure...
PS:just an alternative, if it happens again.

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

Another directory you may want to occasionally empty out is /usr/portage/distfiles.

When you emerge an app the downloaded files are placed here but they are never deleted. If you have been running your system for a while and have gone through several versions of apps then this directory can be pretty big.

This is safe too. If an app ever needs to be emerged again the sources will be downloaded again.