Arch Linux

Arsakes

Member

Registered: 2011-09-17

Posts: 27

How to install packages in different directory

I can't upgrade cuda & tensorflow because I don't have enough space on / partition. Never knew I'd see the day.

For some ridiculous reason the size of cudnn + cudnn + tensorflow have grown altogether to 12GB in recent year.

Can I somehow tell pacman to install particular set of package in other partition?

Last edited by Arsakes (2020-10-13 23:29:30)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,516

Website

Re: How to install packages in different directory

You can't really.  At least you definitely cant in the sense that packages are not installed to a "directory", they are installed to to a filesystem and when they are unpacked, content is placed in quite many different directories.

Some packages can be installed to /opt (or if not managed by pacman, to /usr/local) but this would require patching and rebuilding those packages to work properly in these locations.  This would likely be quite a PITA for those you mention.

However, if the real problem is that you are just running out of space on your root partition, there are many other options to free up space that would often be much easier (some - if they apply - are trivially easy).

What is actually taking up the most space in your root partition (use du/ncdu to check).  Have you cleaned out your package cache?  Are your journal / logs of reasonable size (and configured to stay at a reasonable size)?

Would expanding your root partition be a possibility?

If all else is ruled out, there may be ways to install certain packages on another parititon - perhaps with another directory, or perhaps with a unionfs, overlay, or similar approach.  But all of these are really more trouble than they're worth if a simpler and more future-proof option is possible.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Arsakes

Member

Registered: 2011-09-17

Posts: 27

Re: How to install packages in different directory

Unfortunately the simple option I've explored, the `/` partition has 32 GB. Majority of which is taken by cuda 7.9GB  and (would be) tensorflow (5GB).
The rest is all other software, libraries and so on. Pacman cache and journal is less than 1GB.
In 2016 32Gb for / seemed more than i need.

I'm not sure if I can expand the / all available space.
I have swap partition maybe i can delete it?

Last edited by Arsakes (2020-10-14 01:40:20)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,706

Re: How to install packages in different directory

If it is directly behind the root partition. Ensure to deactivate the swap before this and you may need the swap space (eg. you can use a swapfile or create a new partition elsewhere)
Closely read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … partitions and don't forget to resize the FS as well.

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Arsakes

Member

Registered: 2011-09-17

Posts: 27

Re: How to install packages in different directory

Thanks! I will look into this solution.
Right now I've installed tensorflow from pip, somehow it takes 1GB instead of 4GB, i wish devs were more frugal with hard drive space, it's too cheap.