/root file system full

[Alex de Kruijff]

On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 04:50:32PM -0500, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> > Good Morning,
> > 
> > I have recently installed FreeBSD 4.9  and have thoroughly enjoyed my first
> > foray into the BSD world. Indeed my first foray into any non-windows OS. So
> > far I have encountered quite a few problems but have always managed to find
> > an answer in the handbook or by searching through the extensive resources
> > available on the net. Great documentaion! This is the first time I have
> > needed to ask a question.
> 
> Good.
> 
> 
> > My / filesystem is full. 109%. I want to know what is on the / filesystem,
> > what I can get rid of, how to get rid of it and how to make sure that it
> > doesn't happen again.
> 
> First, use the program to check usage of a disk.
> Since it is / that is overfull, 
> log in or su to root
>    cd /
>    du -sk *
> 
> Then find out which directory trees or files are using up
> all the space.
> CD in to those directories and do the same thing until you 
> find some things that seem unexpectedly large or unnecessary.
> Then you can delete unneeded things.
> 
> In spite of a pretty good system, upgrades and installs can use
> up space and leave extra stuff lying around.   Some of them clean
> up after themselves well and some don't do so well.
> 
> As for the amount of space you need in a / filesystem, I think
> that the 128 MB is unrealistic.   If you have just a base system
> and stay right on top of it all the time, you can get by with that
> amount.   With disks being so much larget nowdays, I let myself
> have more, maybe double or so.   But, on the machine I am on at
> the moment, although I have a bigger root, only 43 MB of it is used.

I agree, but don't make it to much bigger. There is a better performance
include with a small root, since the start of the disk is faster then
the end. Having a small root allow a faster boot and faster writes and
read to swap file, since this is then closer to the start. I feel 256M
would be appropriate. It migth be that less gives problems when you try
to update though the make world process.

-- 
Alex

Articles based on solutions that I use:
http://www.kruijff.org/alex/index.php?dir=docs/FreeBSD/