use / partition space for my /usr partition

[iphitus]

localhost:/home/james# df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/hda6 2.0G 306M 1.6G 16% /

/dev/hda7 945M 833M 64M 93% /home

/dev/hda1 2.0G 1.3G 610M 68% /usr

/dev/hda5 908M 783M 126M 87% /home/james/share

 

 

I want some more space in /usr so I can try out KDE 3.2, but I dont want to be resizing and rearranging my partitions.

 

 

Is there an easy way to use some of the space from my / partition for my /usr partition?

 

Here is my fstab (the cleaned version):

 

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

# <file system> <mount point> <type>  <options>    <dump>  <pass>

/dev/hda6    /    ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro      0 1

/dev/hda7    /home ext3    defaults        0 2

/dev/hda8    none    swap    sw      0 0

/dev/fd0        /floppy auto    rw,user,noauto  0 0

/dev/hdc        /cdrom  iso9660 ro,user,noauto  0 0

proc    /proc proc    defaults        0 0

/dev/sda    /mnt/sd          auto noauto,user 0 0

/dev/hda1    /usr ext3    defaults        0 2

/dev/hda5    /home/james/share vfat defaults,user,noauto 1 0

[Guest anon]

MDK installs KDE in /usr. but as i recall, if you d-load from kde.org it puts it in /opt.

That might be an option for you.

[Cannonfodder]

If you have free partition space anywhere you can switch usr to it.. Just update your fstab to point to it.. Another possibility is to make a usr folder in one of your big partitions and point fstab to that. No reason a partition can't support several fstab entries. Third option is to simply redo everything now that you have a better idea of how big the partitions should be. Plus a chance to upgrade to reiserfs if you want it.. More options are available I'm sure..

[bvc]

move the big dirs to / with a symlink. I did it to /usr/portage (800MB to 1GB) in gentoo but have it in my backup partition /share instead of / because I don't have a separate /usr partition.

 

example

cp -fr /usr/share/themes /

mv -f /usr/share/themes /usr/share/themesOLD

ln -s /themes /usr/share/themes

 

when all is varified OK

rm -fr /usr/share/themesOLD

 

Doing this got me 1.8GB back. Also, if you have more than one install or distro and the partitions are always available. Save space by using symlinks. I use gnome so I should have a lot in ~/.icons ~.themes but I put everthing in /usr/share/themes and /usr/share/icons in my mandrake install and symlink the gentoo so that in gentoo /usr/share/themes and /usr/share/icons are symlinks to the mandrake install. Config done/space saved :P

Edited January 4, 2004 by bvc

[iphitus]

ok, thanks. i moved /usr/local and /usr/share to my / partition in a directory called /usrfiles/ then symlinked them.

[qeldroma]

A way to decide WHICH directory to symlink is check their size with "du --summarize /usr/*". This will give you all sizes of the subdirectories in /usr...