Disk full - Beginner - First time user

[Fred Roller]

On Fri, 2009-07-31 at 23:16 -0500, Dan Farrell wrote:
> On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:05:42 -0700 (PDT)
> Tiago Pereira <t27026t at yahoo.com.br> wrote:
> 
> > Dear all,
> > 
> > After so many year suffering with windows I decided to migrate to
> > linux. 
> 
> good for you, welcome to the wonderful world of unix.  
> 
> > However, now I see that my disk is full. 
> 
> yes, because you've created a 2.3GB partition for all of /, which is
> not enough for anything but a very, very limited installation.  
> 
> > Is the any procedure I can do to fix this?
> 
> there are a few options.  You could possibly change the root filesystem
> to a different partition by booting off a livecd (so you don't already
> have partitions mounted), creating a new partition/filesystem (maybe in
> place of sda5?), and then copying contents of sda6 to sda5.  
> 
> another option is to move a directory that takes up a lot of space,
> like /usr, to another partition.  to do that, you'd probably have to
> boot from a cd, because you'd need things in /usr while you did the
> move.  but once it was moved, and the machine was configured to
> mount /usr on boot, you should be able to continue running the system
> normally.  
> 
> > 
> > Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
> > [...]
> >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  
> > /dev/sda1   *           1        7649    61440561    7  
> > /dev/sda2            7650        9729    16707600    f 
> > /dev/sda5            7650        9403    14088973+   7
> > /dev/sda6            9404        9707     2441848+  83
> > /dev/sda7            9708        9729      176683+  82  
> 
> So if I'm not mistaken: 
> sda1	windows partition
> sda2 	extended partition
> sda5	another windows partition (NTFS at least)
> sda6	linux partition 
> sda7 	swap
> 
> > Disk /dev/sdb: 1998 MB, 1998585856 bytes
> this looks like a  usb thumb drive, sd card, or similar; irrelevant.  i
> am ignoring it.  
> 
> good use of df here!  i am removing irrelevant lines.  
> > tiago at tiago-desktop:~$ df -h
> > Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> > /dev/sda6             2.3G  2.2G     0 100% /
> > /dev/sda1              59G   45G   15G  76% /media/disk
> > /dev/sda5              14G   92M   14G   1% /media/disk-1
>  
> So, you're using 92 megs of sda5, a 14 gig partition.  can you
> repurpose it for linux usage?  if so, perhaps ubuntu experts can help
> you move big directories like /usr onto a seperate partition.
> 
> if you want to go ahead with these ideas, you'll need ubuntu-specific
> help on how to do so.  I could tell you how to do it in gentoo, but I
> think ubuntu would override our configuration changes and you'd end up
> with a broken system.  
> 
> but the problem is very solvable.  
> 

I agree with re-purposing sd5 to ubuntu.  This seems the path of least
resistance.  If it were me the following procedure should move things:

boot from a live cd

open a terminal and run

	Applications->Accessories->Terminal

	dd if=/dev/sda6 of=/dev/sda5

!!!! This will overwrite any data on sda5 - back it up !!!!

Install gparted (partition editor) [you're still on the live CD]

	sudo apt-get install gparted

	System->Administration->Parted

Expand the sda6 partition to the full 14Gb then edit your boot device.
Be sure to backup the menu.lst first!

	sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.jic

	gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Look for your linux entry and change what should be hd (0,6) to hd (0,5)
[as a side note the first number is the harddrive 0=1st and second
number is the partition.]

Save the file and reboot.  If all went well you should boot into your
linux install and be done.  If not, sda6 is untouched (fall back point)
and you can remove the .jic from your grub/menu.lst back up.  This will
put you back to where you were.  I should work though. :)  I do not know
what your menu.lst will look like as a dual boot as I use virtual
machines for the few times I need XP; perhaps some one else could
validate the grub portion of the instructions.

Good luck.


	


-- 
Fred R.
www.fwrgallery.com

"Life is like Linux - simple; if you are fighting it, you are doing
something wrong."