Root partition full

karan000 · 2013-10-01 09:18:56

I was following www.muktware.com/5451/how-install-arch-linux, and created a 2048mb partition (for root) and another partition for home

cfdisk

     sda1            Boot            Primary      ext4                                        2048.10
     sda2                            Primary      swap                                       17404.70
     sda3            Boot            Primary      ext4                                      307197.76
                                     Pri/Log      Free Space                                673554.35    *

Anyway while installing packages I got the following message

(55/55) checking available disk space              [######################] 100%
error: Partition / too full: 29552 blocks needed, 25781 blocks free
error: not enough free disk space
error: failed to commit transaction (not enough free disk space)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

So it's pretty obvious that the 300gb partition I had assigned for /home (which would be seperate to root) isn't being written on, instead everything I installed from pacman went to the root partition.

Not sure what I missed out on doing, but I'm assuming there's no way to fix this apart from re-installing arch, but how would I fix it so that all packages and files are written on a seperate partition?

Apologies if there's an incosistances in my post

ebal · 2013-10-01 09:31:15

1. boot into rescue
2. create a new partition
3. move data

satanselbow · 2013-10-01 09:31:42

Do you want someone to point out how bad it is trying to install Arch [or any OS!] from any random, 5 month out of date, poorly written, never heard of it before blog post?

Grab the latest ISO from the Arch Download page, read (and understand) The Beginner's Guide on the Arch Wiki - if you have any problems with the instructions there then come back and someone will be glad to help

The error message you are seeing clearly says that you have insufficient space on your / drive. The solution should be pretty obvious? For the record my / partition is 60G and 2/3 full on a mature system.

knightzx · 2013-10-01 09:31:46

why do you create 2048mb root partition?
I think you need 15gb for root partition and 2gb for swap
your partition scheme is wrong

mzneverdies · 2013-10-01 09:33:42

So it's pretty obvious that the 300gb partition I had assigned for /home (which would be seperate to root) isn't being written on, instead everything I installed from pacman went to the root partition.

Isn't that the way it should be? I mean, when you install a package, binaries usually go to /usr/bin, librearies to /lib, and so on. Nothing goes to /home -well, user .config files do-.

Also, 17Gb swap? Wtf?

karol · 2013-10-01 09:34:08

You should read the Arch wiki and not rely on external sources.

The packages are being written to /var, /usr etc. Your /home/<username> will have some configs and that's it. Your / partition should be at least 5 GB. If you have 300+ GB drive, make it at least 15 GB, maybe even bigger if you want to install games, full-blown DEs etc.

What made you think the packages are being installed to /home? Which distro does that?

Skitter · 2013-10-01 09:40:38

Indeed. Good practice is to create separate boot partition.
In summary:
- SWAP depends on your ram (about 8 GB)
- ROOT more than 10 GB
- HOME depends on you
- BOOT 1 GB

So lets assume that my HDD is named SDA.
I need to create 4 new partitions as I mentioned before.
- SDA1 - boot partition
- SDA2 - root partition
- SDA3 - home partition
- SDA4 - swap partition

$ mkdir /mnt/home
$ mkdir /mnt/boot
$ mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
$ mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
$ mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/home
$ mkswap /dev/sda4
$ swapon /dev/sda4

Last edited by Skitter (2013-10-01 13:01:26)

Trilby · 2013-10-01 10:16:49

There are a wide range of suitable values for root partition size, and what is best for one user may not be suitable for another. If you plan on using one of the big DEs and/or installing lots of big games, you'll need more space than one with a very minimal system. But regardless of how minimal you go, 2GB will almost certainly be insufficient - as you have now seen.

Back in the AIF installer days, the default (which could of course be changed) was once 7GB, then I think it changed to 10GB. These seems to be good values for a fairly basic system - but if you have a big HDD, you may just want to start with more breathing room and do 15-20GB.

But all this is really secondary to the root cause (pun intended) of this issue which was also indicated above: don't use that installation guide. The filesystem size recommendations are not the only show stopper in that guide.

jdarnold · 2013-10-01 13:03:11

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a 2gb boot partition, but not a 2gb root partition.

2ManyDogs · 2013-10-01 13:46:15

While I agree that new users should not follow random internet blogs for installing Arch, I'd like to point out that the blog in question does not recommend a 2G root partition -- it recommends 15G for root and 3G for swap. There are other significant problems with that blog post, but the problem here is that the OP did not follow the size recommendation given for the root partition.

arcon · 2013-10-01 14:32:51

2ManyDogs wrote:

blog in question does not recommend a 2G root partition

@karan000: So, you did a mistake there ;p

But about having a 2G root partition:
I don't think that there's anything wrong with having a 2G root partition, i'm having a 2G root partition with arch on it without any problem, as base packages took upto 600M(in /var/cache/pacman/pkg) on the disk so it's pretty obvious that you can run arch on even 1.5G but that limits you to having a real minimum setup.
(which i don't think that is what you want) ;p

Last edited by arcon (2013-10-01 14:40:06)

ANOKNUSA · 2013-10-01 14:59:46

karan000 wrote:

So it's pretty obvious that the 300gb partition I had assigned for /home (which would be seperate to root) isn't being written on, instead everything I installed from pacman went to the root partition.

You say that as though that's unusual. If you have multiple partitions, the root partition is always where software will be installed; that's what makes it the "root" of your system. In any case, everyone here is going to have a different opinion on how to partition a drive; there really won't be anything to learn from that (no offense, folks ) Think about the kind of system you want to install---anything involving a WIMP interface and visual effects will require more space than a more minimal interface---and follow satanselbow's advice above. As for my two cents: Even when I was running a full-blown KDE setup, I never exceeded 8Gb-worth of used space, so 10 Gb for a root partition will likely be more than enough.

clfarron4 · 2013-10-01 21:10:02

It looks like the you got the /root and swap partitions mounted the wrong way round... I think @karan000 was aiming for a 17GB /root and 2GB swap, but got it the wrong way by round by accident...

In this case, I would suggest just to reinstall with sda1 as swap and sda2 as root, unless there is something glaringly wrong with my idea.

Last edited by clfarron4 (2013-10-01 21:10:23)

ThePacman · 2013-10-02 00:40:24

arcon wrote:

2ManyDogs wrote:
blog in question does not recommend a 2G root partition
@karan000: So, you did a mistake there ;p
But about having a 2G root partition:
I don't think that there's anything wrong with having a 2G root partition, i'm having a 2G root partition with arch on it without any problem, as base packages took upto 600M(in /var/cache/pacman/pkg) on the disk so it's pretty obvious that you can run arch on even 1.5G but that limits you to having a real minimum setup.
(which i don't think that is what you want) ;p

I suppose you could have a root partition nearly as small as you wanted, so long as you mounted /usr, /home, /lib, /var, and possibly /etc on separate partitions.
The whole point of /usr is to be more modular towards having the system partitioned.. You'd have / on a small, fast, expensive disk, so things like /bin and /boot would work well, but you wouldn't be wasting expensive space for packages and other non-system programs.
Nowadays, the biggest thing people do with single-disk partition schemes is /home on a separate partition, but, really, the sky's the limit. (particularly with GPT.. now you're no longer limited to 16 partitions... )

cfr · 2013-10-02 01:16:22

ThePacman wrote:

I suppose you could have a root partition nearly as small as you wanted, so long as you mounted /usr, /home, /lib, /var, and possibly /etc on separate partitions.
The whole point of /usr is to be more modular towards having the system partitioned.. You'd have / on a small, fast, expensive disk, so things like /bin and /boot would work well, but you wouldn't be wasting expensive space for packages and other non-system programs.

/bin is a symlink to /usr/bin...

ThePacman · 2013-10-02 02:34:17

cfr wrote:

ThePacman wrote:
I suppose you could have a root partition nearly as small as you wanted, so long as you mounted /usr, /home, /lib, /var, and possibly /etc on separate partitions.
The whole point of /usr is to be more modular towards having the system partitioned.. You'd have / on a small, fast, expensive disk, so things like /bin and /boot would work well, but you wouldn't be wasting expensive space for packages and other non-system programs.
/bin is a symlink to /usr/bin...

Wow.. I forgot about that....
Arch never ceases to amaze

arcon · 2013-10-02 05:42:03

ThePacman wrote:

I suppose you could have a root partition nearly as small as you wanted, so long as you mounted /usr, /home, /lib, /var, and possibly /etc on separate partitions.

You can have root partition as small as under 2G without having seperate partitions like /usr, /home, /lib, /var. Yes you can!! but as i said in my previous post it limits you to a real minimum system.

To describe that, in my system one of a partition is about 2G, which contains no other partition for any of the above shown directories and it holds 1.2G on my disk having a pacman cache(containing xserver too) of about 600M(32-bit packages) and also contain all the respective man-pages and docs and 1.2G of space means that there is plenty of room for logs too.

clfarron4 wrote:

It looks like the you got the /root and swap partitions mounted the wrong way round... I think @karan000 was aiming for a 17GB /root and 2GB swap, but got it the wrong way by round by accident...

That is exactly what i want to say

But i think there might be another solution, create another partition and backup your root to that newly created partition and change fstab entry.
But it seems overcomplicated than just *reinstall*.

Last edited by arcon (2013-10-02 05:42:52)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-01 09:18:56

Root partition full

#2 2013-10-01 09:31:15

Re: Root partition full

#3 2013-10-01 09:31:42

Re: Root partition full

#4 2013-10-01 09:31:46

Re: Root partition full

#5 2013-10-01 09:33:42

Re: Root partition full

#6 2013-10-01 09:34:08

Re: Root partition full

#7 2013-10-01 09:40:38

Re: Root partition full

#8 2013-10-01 10:16:49

Re: Root partition full

#9 2013-10-01 13:03:11

Re: Root partition full

#10 2013-10-01 13:46:15

Re: Root partition full

#11 2013-10-01 14:32:51

Re: Root partition full

#12 2013-10-01 14:59:46

Re: Root partition full

#13 2013-10-01 21:10:02

Re: Root partition full

#14 2013-10-02 00:40:24

Re: Root partition full

#15 2013-10-02 01:16:22

Re: Root partition full

#16 2013-10-02 02:34:17

Re: Root partition full

#17 2013-10-02 05:42:03

Re: Root partition full

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