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#1 2010-08-31 19:33:34

Mecharuva
Member
Registered: 2010-08-28
Posts: 33

Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

I have an Asus Eee 901 with a 4GiB Master SSD, and I try as hard as I can to keep it as open as possible space-wise.
I noticed earlier that /var/cache/pacman/pkg was at more than a half a gig in size!
I ran pacman -Scc to clear it all out, because my netbook appears to be quite stable at the moment and I don't fiddle with critical files and such.
Have I made some horrible, terrible mistake?
Are there any other things I can do to save space on my little drive? (though at the time the largest directories are /lib and /usr).

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#2 2010-08-31 19:38:29

karol
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Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Removing /lib is a rather poor idea, but reducing the number and weight of the apps you use may work http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lig … plications
You can try to compress /usr http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Max … ing_.2Fusr

Edit: '-Scc' exists for a reason, it's up to you to decide to use it. Time will tell whether was it a mistake or not.

Last edited by karol (2010-08-31 19:40:34)

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#3 2010-08-31 19:43:43

jakobm
Member
Registered: 2008-03-24
Posts: 132

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Compressing '/usr' with the mentioned method really is a good option, if you are comfortable with it. In my installation, it shrinks the disk usage of '/usr' more than to the half.

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#4 2010-08-31 19:55:07

Mecharuva
Member
Registered: 2010-08-28
Posts: 33

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Thanks for the tips guys!
I just ran pacman -Qdt to list orphans and I see cups, deb2targz, fontforge, git, mpg123, prelink, samba, sane, skype, subversion, unrar and xorg-utils-macros.
I could have sworn that some of these are semi-necessary files though..? Doesn't pacman use deb2targz for installing from debs? And I know subversion is for SVN stuffs, isn't it?
I don't use file sharing with Windows so I suppose samba could be removed, no?
And I'm using openbox if it matters.

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#5 2010-08-31 20:01:06

karol
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Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

You can't blindly trust pacman. Read the manpage to see what e.g. '--asdeps' or '--asexplicit' does.
You need git if you want to access git repos.
You need unrar if you want to unrar things.
mpg123 is tiny so it doesn't really matter, you can keep it, unless it has some huge dependencies.

What are you installing from debs?

Last edited by karol (2010-08-31 20:02:32)

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#6 2010-08-31 20:03:01

skanky
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From: WAIS
Registered: 2009-10-23
Posts: 1,847

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

You can move /usr (and/or /var) to the larger disk and link back. Might be best to do that with a live disk - I've never tried moving it myself (did it in the install).
Compressing may do as well.


"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin."  - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle

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#7 2010-08-31 20:09:37

Mecharuva
Member
Registered: 2010-08-28
Posts: 33

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Duly noted, karol. I opened GTKPacman to check out descriptions of all these things, and they're all labeled "Installed as a dependency for another package."
Pacman lists them as orphans, so then the package they depended on has already been removed, unless pacman is reporting the status of these packages erroneously? Could that be a possibility?
I don't want to break my system somehow by removing them.
Of course I could create a list somewhere and then reinstall them if I run into issues, no?
Skanky, I had tried putting /usr on my second hard drive once before, on another distro long ago, but I noticed some terribly sluggish performance, even for that distro. I was told it's because the slave SSD in the Eee 901 is not nearly as fast as the master.
I like fast, so I think I'll leave /usr on the master. I don't know if I'll compress it. That's a good amount of space, jakobm, but I don't want to put more on the CPU than there is already.

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#8 2010-08-31 20:13:00

Cdh
Member
Registered: 2009-02-03
Posts: 1,098

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Compressing is a good idea: You could try btrfs (it also has SSD optimizations, though its performance is a bit broken in 2.6.35) with compression. Works well even on slow CPUs.


฿ 18PRsqbZCrwPUrVnJe1BZvza7bwSDbpxZz

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#9 2010-08-31 20:15:18

Skripka
Member
From: 2X1280X1024
Registered: 2009-02-19
Posts: 555

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Mecharuva wrote:

Duly noted, karol. I opened GTKPacman to check out descriptions of all these things, and they're all labeled "Installed as a dependency for another package."
Pacman lists them as orphans, so then the package they depended on has already been removed, unless pacman is reporting the status of these packages erroneously? Could that be a possibility?

I'll bet money you've installed stuff from AUR that requires Git and SVN for grabbing source code in order to compile.

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#10 2010-08-31 20:15:20

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Cdh wrote:

Compressing is a good idea: You could try btrfs (it also has SSD optimizations, though its performance is a bit broken in 2.6.35) with compression. Works well even on slow CPUs.

I think for a 4GB drive btrfs is an overkill, plus squashfs compresses more than btrfs (it's read-only, though).

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#11 2010-08-31 20:18:35

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Skripka wrote:
Mecharuva wrote:

Duly noted, karol. I opened GTKPacman to check out descriptions of all these things, and they're all labeled "Installed as a dependency for another package."
Pacman lists them as orphans, so then the package they depended on has already been removed, unless pacman is reporting the status of these packages erroneously? Could that be a possibility?

I'll bet money you've installed stuff from AUR that requires Git and SVN for grabbing source code in order to compile.

You can check http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uno … positories and pick some repositories if they provide the packages you need, so you don't have to rely on AUR.

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#12 2010-08-31 20:27:03

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Mecharuva wrote:

Duly noted, karol. I opened GTKPacman to check out descriptions of all these things, and they're all labeled "Installed as a dependency for another package."
Pacman lists them as orphans, so then the package they depended on has already been removed, unless pacman is reporting the status of these packages erroneously? Could that be a possibility?
I don't want to break my system somehow by removing them.
Of course I could create a list somewhere and then reinstall them if I run into issues, no?
Skanky, I had tried putting /usr on my second hard drive once before, on another distro long ago, but I noticed some terribly sluggish performance, even for that distro. I was told it's because the slave SSD in the Eee 901 is not nearly as fast as the master.
I like fast, so I think I'll leave /usr on the master. I don't know if I'll compress it. That's a good amount of space, jakobm, but I don't want to put more on the CPU than there is already.

Those packages were needed by some other package, not the other way round.

A is a dependency for B. You first install A, then B. You first remove ('pacman -R') B, then A. You don't have to remove A, and if you run 'pacman -R B' only B will be removed, A will be left with the description that it was installed as a dependency for another package. If you 'pacman -Rs B' and A is not needed by other packages, both B and A will be removed.

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#13 2010-08-31 20:32:15

skanky
Member
From: WAIS
Registered: 2009-10-23
Posts: 1,847

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Mecharuva wrote:

Skanky, I had tried putting /usr on my second hard drive once before, on another distro long ago, but I noticed some terribly sluggish performance, even for that distro. I was told it's because the slave SSD in the Eee 901 is not nearly as fast as the master.
I like fast, so I think I'll leave /usr on the master. I don't know if I'll compress it. That's a good amount of space, jakobm, but I don't want to put more on the CPU than there is already.

Fair enough, haven't noticed a speed issue myself - nothing to compare with though. smile


"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin."  - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle

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#14 2010-08-31 20:33:01

Mecharuva
Member
Registered: 2010-08-28
Posts: 33

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Skripka - Yep.
karol - Ah, so you're saying pacman lists them as an orphan because they came as a dependency for one thing, but perhaps another thing I installed after the fact still depends on them? Am I right?
To my knowledge, I have only ever used -Rnsu to remove packages, unless GTKPacman doesn't use -nsu when removing. I believe I may have removed a package or two using it.
Skanky - Yeah after replying to your first post I ran hdparm -t to test write speeds. The master is above 60M/s but the slave is below 30M/s. The Arch wiki article covering read/write performance said 40M/s is sufficient, but naturally faster is better.

Last edited by Mecharuva (2010-08-31 20:35:04)

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#15 2010-08-31 20:37:11

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Mecharuva wrote:

Skripka - Yep.
karol - Ah, so you're saying pacman lists them as an orphan because they came as a dependency for one thing, but perhaps another thing I installed after the fact still depends on them? Am I right?
To my knowledge, I have only ever used -Rnsu to remove packages, unless GTKPacman doesn't use -nsu when removing. I believe I may have removed a package or two using it.

Not quite. You can remove git, but you will have to reinstall it if you want access git repositories. I don't think that anything relies on git at the moment. it may be a "make dependency" i.e. a package is needed to build another but it's not needed afterwards to run the other package. If you want to get rid of them after building, use AUR helpers that keep tabs on all that packages for you.

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#16 2010-08-31 20:42:57

skanky
Member
From: WAIS
Registered: 2009-10-23
Posts: 1,847

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Mecharuva wrote:

Skanky - Yeah after replying to your first post I ran hdparm -t to test write speeds. The master is above 60M/s but the slave is below 30M/s. The Arch wiki article covering read/write performance said 40M/s is sufficient, but naturally faster is better.

That would explain it...my laptop is 35MB/s so the 901's slave will run at the same speed.


"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin."  - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle

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#17 2010-08-31 20:53:09

Mecharuva
Member
Registered: 2010-08-28
Posts: 33

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

karol - Sounds good. I'll keep git and subversion just so I don't have to reinstall them whenever I try to instal a git or svn package. What risks would I run if I remove cups/sane/samba? I don't use them, to my knowledge at least.
Skanky - Yeah, but I enjoy speeeeeeed lol. I've managed to open up 1.5GiB of space on my HDD now, should be plenty enough.

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#18 2010-08-31 20:58:33

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

cups is for printing, sane for scanning, samba for sharing. If you don't use it, you don't need it.

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#19 2010-08-31 21:04:56

skanky
Member
From: WAIS
Registered: 2009-10-23
Posts: 1,847

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Mecharuva wrote:

karol - Sounds good. I'll keep git and subversion just so I don't have to reinstall them whenever I try to instal a git or svn package. What risks would I run if I remove cups/sane/samba? I don't use them, to my knowledge at least.
Skanky - Yeah, but I enjoy speeeeeeed lol. I've managed to open up 1.5GiB of space on my HDD now, should be plenty enough.


Yeah, fair enough - was just saying why I didn't notice it as being "slow". wink


"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin."  - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle

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#20 2010-09-01 01:08:38

Awebb
Member
Registered: 2010-05-06
Posts: 6,275

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

If you remove cups, you'll lose pdf printing via cups-pdf. If you're fine with that, kill it.

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#21 2010-09-01 02:44:53

keenerd
Package Maintainer (PM)
Registered: 2007-02-22
Posts: 647
Website

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Back when I used a 2GB SSD, I wrote a script to show the total install size of all packages.

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=26201

The "--console" option might be most useful for you.

Last edited by keenerd (2010-09-01 02:45:35)

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#22 2010-09-01 03:38:12

oupsemma
Member
Registered: 2010-01-01
Posts: 70

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

Used to have a 701 earlier, with also 4GB only, and there was some regular cleaning to do to keep some available space on it:

- check and clean your ~/thumbnaills folder, as it sometimes stores megas of pictures

- compress your /user/doc

- when using a music player, albums covers are stored in it and might also take a lot of space which can be freed

- in /user/share/locale, lots of languages are stored; compress or get rid of the ones you're not using (like with localepurge in Debian)

- have your /tmp folder being automatically cleaned at bootup

- clean your /var/log folder regularly, or if you want to keep a lot of logs, compress them and put them into /var/log/old

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#23 2010-09-01 03:44:06

Mecharuva
Member
Registered: 2010-08-28
Posts: 33

Re: Netbook, must save space on 4GiB SSD!

keenerd - Thanks for that! Had to grab gpicview to look at the .svg it produced, didn't seem to produce any .png... But I like gpicview more than feh so it's all good.

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