Quoting Marvin Pascual ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > I'm afraid that the two partitions that I'm planning to change it's > filesystems from ext2 to ReiserFS are my /home and /var partitions. My > /home partition has the biggest size of all the other partitions (almost > 80% of the hard disk capacity) and second to it is my /var (which I > think occupies 10% of the hard disk capacity). > > What should I do then?
You forgot to say (1) how much space is _occupied_ (counting only files you care about, e.g., not including logfiles) on those filesystems, and (2) how much space is available elsewhere for temporary storage. > I just read from http://www.namesys.com/install.php about on how can I > switch or use ReiserFS to a 2.4 based kernel. I'm still using the > default kernel of Debian Woody, 2.2.20(?).... Good God, why? Looking through the available packages for Debian-stable, I see: Package: kernel-image-2.4.18-686 Package: kernel-image-2.4.18-686-smp You should apt-get whichever of those is appropriate for your CPU architecture. (You didn't say whether your P4 is dual-processor or not.) _Important note_: Debian's prepackaged 2.4 kernels rely heavily on initial RAMdisk (initrd) support, which their 2.2 kernels did not. During installation of the above kernel images, you'll be warned about the need to alter your bootloader to furnish a path to the initrd, before rebooting. It's vital that you _not_ ignore that warning. Here's my /etc/lilo.conf: lba32 boot=/dev/sda root=/dev/sda5 #install=/boot/boot.b install=menu map=/boot/map delay=20 vga=normal default=linux image=/boot/vmlinuz label=linux initrd=/boot/initrd.img read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz-old label=linuxold read-only optional Notice the "initrd=" line: I had to insert that when I started using a 2.4 kernel. (My "linuxold" kernel is a tried-and-true 2.2 one, which doesn't rely on an inital RAMdisk for booting.) Anyhow, "80% of the hard disk capacity" wouldn't tell me much even if you were talking about how much space your _files_ on /home were taking up, instead of the filesystem's total size. What matters is how much byte count you need to find temporary storage for, and how much free space you have to put it there. Let me give you an example from my own system: [rick@uncle-enzo] ~ $ df -H Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 985MB 207MB 729MB 23% / /dev/sdb7 2.0GB 891MB 978MB 48% /var /dev/sda8 985MB 455MB 480MB 49% /var/log /dev/sdb8 3.0GB 689MB 2.2GB 25% /usr /dev/sda9 5.0GB 1.1GB 3.7GB 23% /usr/local /dev/sdb1 985MB 275MB 661MB 30% /home /dev/sdb5 291MB 8.6MB 267MB 4% /tmp /dev/sda1 97MB 11MB 81MB 12% /boot [rick@uncle-enzo] Notice that my /home partition has 275 MB of files on it. Those could be stuffed any number of places, such as the unoccupied space in /usr/local (/dev/sda9). Or, I could steal my two swap partitions' space for that purpose: uncle-enzo:~# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 8683 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 95 97264 83 Linux /dev/sda2 96 7369 7448576 5 Extended /dev/sda5 96 1049 976880 83 Linux /dev/sda6 1050 1526 488432 83 Linux /dev/sda7 1527 1647 123888 82 Linux swap /dev/sda8 1648 2601 976880 83 Linux /dev/sda9 2602 7369 4882416 83 Linux uncle-enzo:~# fdisk -l /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 8683 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 954 976880 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 955 6129 5299200 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 955 1240 292848 83 Linux /dev/sdb6 1241 1361 123888 82 Linux swap /dev/sdb7 1362 3268 1952752 83 Linux /dev/sdb8 3269 6129 2929648 83 Linux uncle-enzo:~# Well, 124MB + 124MB = 248MB is _almost_ enough space. If I needed to use that, I could probably find some of my /home contents that could be deleted without regret. But that would actually not be necessary in my example. If I simply didn't have enough room on my system to be resized, I could temporarily store files on a second, nearby Linux machine, copying them over via SSH, something like this: # (sleep 10; cd olddirectory && tar Sczpf -) | ssh username@newhost 'cd newdirectory && tar Sxvzpf -' -- Cheers, Right to keep and bear Rick Moen Haiku shall not be abridged [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or denied. So there. _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
