Weblog entry #259 for simonw
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#259
Etch to Lenny - Disk space
Posted by simonw on Thu 19 Jun 2008 at 22:39
My work desktop (due to hardware issues) was a relatively new and clean Etch install. So I thought I'd do an upgrade to Lenny, so I could run Firefox 3 and other exciting stuff.
Now the hard disk I stuck in this box (when the shiny new hard disk died) isn't that big, I mean if /home is mounted elsewhere how much disk space could an OS need? (rhetorical).
The dist-upgrade from Etch to Lenny required more hard disk space than was available. However apt-get didn't seem to notice this, and carried on (surprisingly successfully given there wasn't enough disk space to complete).
Occurred to me that it is silly to hold all the upgrade locally for the whole duration, and I'm not the only one to think this.
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-588552.html
I wrote a two line script to install packages one at a time in the order apt-get suggests (which I'm using on a machine running Sid that also doesn't have enough disk space for all the packages I should have been testing recently), which would seem to largely fulfill the desired objective. But is this sort of thing generally a big enough issue that it should be added to apt?
Now I probably should get bigger disks (and repartition my desktop boxes the way the installer recommends for beginners but with a little less swap space!). Do others find that the root partition is never big enough?
Etch to Lenny was surprisingly painless as a desktop upgrade inspite of allegedly not having enough disk space to do the upgrade in, but then I expect all the difficult stuff to be in the server component changes. So far it "just worked", and all I had to do was tell kmail not to show me some "Favourite folder" view (which looked pointless but I'm sure is useful to someone). Only downside so far, is that it was a pretty slow process to upgrade, and whilst most of the time I could carry on using the desktop, some steps needed NFS mounts down and such like.
I did try Evolution in Etch before the upgrade, after listening to a LUG radio episode, it tried to destroy all my email. I'm not motivated enough to try it again in Lenny.
We need more smaller releases to keep the actual upgrade process smaller and quicker ;)
Better post this before "apt" eats my video drivers....
Now the hard disk I stuck in this box (when the shiny new hard disk died) isn't that big, I mean if /home is mounted elsewhere how much disk space could an OS need? (rhetorical).
The dist-upgrade from Etch to Lenny required more hard disk space than was available. However apt-get didn't seem to notice this, and carried on (surprisingly successfully given there wasn't enough disk space to complete).
Occurred to me that it is silly to hold all the upgrade locally for the whole duration, and I'm not the only one to think this.
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-588552.html
I wrote a two line script to install packages one at a time in the order apt-get suggests (which I'm using on a machine running Sid that also doesn't have enough disk space for all the packages I should have been testing recently), which would seem to largely fulfill the desired objective. But is this sort of thing generally a big enough issue that it should be added to apt?
Now I probably should get bigger disks (and repartition my desktop boxes the way the installer recommends for beginners but with a little less swap space!). Do others find that the root partition is never big enough?
Etch to Lenny was surprisingly painless as a desktop upgrade inspite of allegedly not having enough disk space to do the upgrade in, but then I expect all the difficult stuff to be in the server component changes. So far it "just worked", and all I had to do was tell kmail not to show me some "Favourite folder" view (which looked pointless but I'm sure is useful to someone). Only downside so far, is that it was a pretty slow process to upgrade, and whilst most of the time I could carry on using the desktop, some steps needed NFS mounts down and such like.
I did try Evolution in Etch before the upgrade, after listening to a LUG radio episode, it tried to destroy all my email. I'm not motivated enough to try it again in Lenny.
We need more smaller releases to keep the actual upgrade process smaller and quicker ;)
Better post this before "apt" eats my video drivers....
Comments on this Entry
Posted by Anonymous (71.241.xx.xx) on Fri 20 Jun 2008 at 00:46
Storage space has always seemed to be vastly abundant with Debian.
The Dselect or Aptitude cache at over Twenty Mega-Bytes is amazing!
I know I can run Debian in very tiny enviroments, under Four Meg....
But then I can not use Dselect or Aptitude without a seemingly
extreemly long waiting period for the cache to use swap space and load.
Although it can be hand installed for very small systems,
if one simply follows an average use of Debian installation; then the
minimum system requirements are very real indeed.
There should be easier ways to use Debian on small boxes with
very little ram or drive space, If care is not taken then a Debian system
can be a very bloated system. This does not show a new comer how a GNU/Linux
system can perform better than the competing O.S.'s
Thank You....
The Dselect or Aptitude cache at over Twenty Mega-Bytes is amazing!
I know I can run Debian in very tiny enviroments, under Four Meg....
But then I can not use Dselect or Aptitude without a seemingly
extreemly long waiting period for the cache to use swap space and load.
Although it can be hand installed for very small systems,
if one simply follows an average use of Debian installation; then the
minimum system requirements are very real indeed.
There should be easier ways to use Debian on small boxes with
very little ram or drive space, If care is not taken then a Debian system
can be a very bloated system. This does not show a new comer how a GNU/Linux
system can perform better than the competing O.S.'s
Thank You....
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (217.216.xx.xx) on Fri 20 Jun 2008 at 01:02
If you expect possible HD space problems, consider using LVM.
For a minimun install, use netinst iso.
Before dist-upgrade, make an apt-get clean to have more HD avalaible space.
For a minimun install, use netinst iso.
Before dist-upgrade, make an apt-get clean to have more HD avalaible space.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (78.176.xx.xx) on Wed 25 Jun 2008 at 11:27
here is the 2¢ tip here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5045880&postcount=49
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]