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Hard Drive Space [solved]


Arak
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Hello,

 

This is an incredibly dumb question but I'm tired of not finding an answer anywhere. I have 2 100 GB Sata hard drives Stripped to make one 200 GB hard drive. Mandriva Linux is the only thing i have installed on it and i have just done a fresh install. Whenever i try to download something (for example, a file 5 or 6 GB's large) it tells me i don't have enough space yet i know for sure i have at least 168.4 GB available (after all is installed). I've tried downloading it in the home folder and the usr folder yet i still have this problem.

 

Any help is welcome.

 

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

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What filesystem? FAT32 cannot take files larger than 2GB IIRC.

 

edit: And also, for security reasons, some distros have a limit on file sizes by the user. (ie, so unprivelidged users cannot fill drive and cripple system). Not sure on the details on this one, i just downloaded my ISO as root last time. Lazy I know. Check out ulimit (man ulimit).

 

(Moved to software cause it seems a software issue)

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Whenever i try to download something (for example, a file 5 or 6 GB's large) it tells me i don't have enough space yet i know for sure i have at least 168.4 GB available.

The most obvious likley cuase is that your file system is limiting the file size. The maximum file size for FAT32 is 4GB but I cannot imagine you are using FAT32 if you only have Mandriva installed? If you are using ext2 or ReiserFS then I believe the file limit is 2GB, the limit for ext3 is 16GB.

 

Another possibility is that Mandriva made your partitions too small during the installation. This happened to me when I installed Mandriva 2008 recently. I chose automatic partitioning and the option to use the free space on Windows and it set up a root and home partition of only about 4.5 GB each, in spite of their being free space of over 100GB. Take a look at the actual partition sizes in the control centre, you may have to increase them. However, if you do it is very likely you will have to re-install Mandriva. I know I did.

Edited by darkscot
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Bullcrap.

The default maximum filesize for FAT32 is 4GB, unless you use a nonstandard (= smaller) cluster size. In that case the limit falls down to 2GB. For NTFS the limit is (wityh the rebular 4K cklustersize at 2 terra.

The 2GB filesize limit for Linux applies for the old (VERY OLD) native filesystem, and VERY old kernel and glibc revisions.

LFS (large file support) has been applied since the second world war, and currently ext2, ext3, reiserfs 3.X-4.X, xfs, jfs and so on can handle single files WAY larger than the biggest blu-ray disk can handle... :P

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The first partition is 10,000 MB, second is 6,000 MB, and the third is somewhere around 162 GB. I have no idea what format they are in, default mandriva 2007. I remember seeing ext 3 or something like that.

I'm wondering if its simply a matter of finding the third partition. i thought the third partition was '/usr' but that one won't let me put anything there. If i reformat, what file format should i put them in? Let me know if there is any more information i can give.

I do have another harddrive with Windows on it but it shouldn't make a difference. Here is what it says with the df command.

 

Filesystem			Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/nvidia_dbcfiddb1
				  9.7G  4.7G  4.5G  52% /
/dev/hda1			 233G  106G  128G  46% /mnt/windows
none				  506M   12K  506M   1% /tmp
/dev/mapper/nvidia_dbcfiddb6
				  169G  4.2G  156G   3% /usr

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169G 4.2G 156G 3% /usr

Right, so 169 GB is allocated for the /usr mount point. This directory is protected so only root can write to it, that's why your normal user can't copy files there.

The root partition (/) has 4.5 GB spare so you can use that, but if the file's any bigger then it simply won't fit, based on how you've partitioned your drive.

 

A typical partitioning setup would have a relatively small root partition, a tiny swap partition, and a relatively large /home partition. That would give your user (ie you) lots of free space to write to. You can have a separate /usr partition if you want but I don't.

 

In order to reallocate the space on your drive you'll have to repartition the drive, which you can do with the Mandriva tools - just (carefully!) use the disk management tool.

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Hi Arak,

 

the problem is *not* a small root partition or missing/insufficient root access, but your /home directory. As you did not allocate /home to a single partition on it's own (which is always a good idea), /home is now located in the normal root directory tree - which is denoted by /.

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what you should do, is copy the contents of your /usr partition to your / partition, copy the contents of your /home directory (folder) to the current /usr partition, then unmount your /usr partition and remount it as /home followed by the proper modifications of /etc/fstab

 

 

So this begs the question:

how much experience with the command line do you have?

Or rather: how much do you want to get?

 

All sarcasm aside, with a bit of fiddling, you can make this work without having to reinstall, and it shouldn't take more than a few minutes and a few commands.

 

It would be helpful if you could post the contents of the file /etc/fstab

 

It may well be possible for us to come up with the few commands you need, that you can put in a script, all in graphics mode; then you'd have to log off, go to non-graphics login, log on as root, execute the script and voila, all fixed.

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Basic.

 

You need the following real Partitions..... /swap............. / ........../home.

 

You do NOT need....... /usr or .... /etc ... /var and so on as real partitions.

 

Frankly you would be better off doing a reinstall and partitioning as suggested until you gain more understanding of how Linux and Mandriva is set up before playing around with CLI.

You have plenty of time in the future to learn cli at your leisure.

 

I hope you realize that by setting up your two HDDs as striping (not stripping) that if one hard drive fails then you lose (not loose) ALL your data. You are far better off to install Mandriva on one of the Drives and use the other for stuff like Music and Photos etc. plus a space to back up essential data from your first hard drive. This way you have important data on both Hard drives.

 

Cheers. John.

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I agree with John, especially, but not only, related to the backups part and risk of data loss.

 

One thing I'd like to add: for a proper installation, indeed you need only a / (root) partition, a /home partition and a swap partition.

BUT I'd like to recommend that you create another partition that can serve as a future root partition.

 

Experience shows that once people get into Linux, at some point they'll want to install a different version: either a different distribution, or a newer release of the same distribution.

If you have a 'spare' partition that you can use as root partition for this new system, you can try it out without burning any bridges behind you.

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