Arch Linux

s0lidnuts

Member

Registered: 2006-08-07

Posts: 6

'Dirty' Linux

I guess this don't fit in any other forums.
I have some problem, every time I think my linux is 'dirty', I mean, things that could be deleted, packages I don't use.. if anyone could guide me on this, I'd be thankful.
And the other problem is that I'm running out of space =/, my 19GB partition isn't being enough to hold my files, so I'm planning to format the stupid Windows Vista partition to ext3, but I don't know what would be the best way to the advantage of the partition. I think the best way would be to move my files while the partition is mounted somewhere else, then reboot from arch cd, remove the /home folder and change fstab adding the following line: /dev/sdaX /home ext3 defaults 0 2

Thanks in advance

mutlu_inek

Member

From: all over the place

Registered: 2006-11-18

Posts: 683

Re: 'Dirty' Linux

pacman -Qe

will tell you which programs you have installed explicitly. To remove those you do not want including their dependencies (in case they are not dependencies for other installed packages) and config files, do

pacman -Rns <packagename>

If you install yaourt (a wrapper for pacman) from AUR, you will have an additional option:

yaourt -Qt

will tell you which packages had been dependencies (runtime or installation), but are nor unnessesary since the packages that depended on them have been removed. But beware: I had wrong output once, so do not remove anything without thinking.

You can always remove old packages pacman cache with pacman -Sc. pacman -Scc will remove all packages from pacman cache (not only old ones). The disadvante is that if a problem occurs due to an erroneous package upgrade, downgrading will be more difficult (search on internet mirrors).

mutlu_inek

Member

From: all over the place

Registered: 2006-11-18

Posts: 683

Re: 'Dirty' Linux

I'm planning to format the stupid Windows Vista partition to ext3, but I don't know what would be the best way to the advantage of the partition. I think the best way would be to move my files while the partition is mounted somewhere else, then reboot from arch cd, remove the /home folder and change fstab adding the following line: /dev/sdaX /home ext3 defaults 0 2

I do not quite understand. Do you have only two linux partitions now, / and swap (i.e. is /home on root partition)?

s0lidnuts

Member

Registered: 2006-08-07

Posts: 6

Re: 'Dirty' Linux

I have / and swap ;D and I want to format the windows partition and move /home to there

xerverius

Member

From: ~

Registered: 2004-11-02

Posts: 230

Website

Re: 'Dirty' Linux

Or cleanup the pacman pkg cache sometimes (pacman -Sc for cleaning old packages and pacman -Scc for every package cached on your pc).

mutlu_inek

Member

From: all over the place

Registered: 2006-11-18

Posts: 683

Re: 'Dirty' Linux

I would do this:

Stop the X server (and any progs use access to files in /home)

$ sudo mke2fs -j /dev/sdaX
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/new_home
$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdaX /mnt/new_home
$ sudo cp -R -a /home/<username> /mnt/new_home
$ sudo umount /mnt/new_home
$ mv /home/<username> /home/<username>_old

Add the new partition to /etc/fstab, e.g. like this:
/dev/sdaX     /home     ext3     defaults,user_xattr     0 2

[if your /home was on a separate partition you would do $ sudo umount /home]

$ sudo mount /home
$ sudo rm -r /mnt/new_home

Restart X, check if everything is fine, then delete the old data with

$ sudo rm -r /home/<username>_old

Done.

But: Think twice about what you do. This is just from the top of my head before the very essential morning coffee.