Disk cleanup or relocation?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I installed Tumbleweed on an old laptop and seriously overallocated /home, at the expense of root. I’m looking for housekeeping advice on pruning, e.g., cache, logs, and alswo information on how to shrink and move /home and expand root.

linux-0ksw:~ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 232.9 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xeb1710f3

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1              63     80324     80262  39.2M de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2           81920  30801919  30720000  14.7G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        30801920 289962499 259160580 123.6G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4  *    289964032 488396799 198432768  94.6G  f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       289966080 294166527   4200448     2G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       294168576 336111615  41943040    20G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7       336113664 488376319 152262656  72.6G 83 Linux
2

I fixed your CODE tags.

I take it that the root file system is “/dev/sda6” and “/home” is “/dev/sda7”.

Depending on what you are using, the 20G for root would be sufficient if using “ext4”, but is going to be tight with “btrfs”.

If this were my system, I would consider reinstall. I would backup “/home” to an external drive. And then on reinstall, use the expert partitioner. Maybe 40G for “/” would be more reasonable (or 50G if you can spare that much). This assumes you are using “btrfs”. Or maybe you could keep the current partitioning, but reinstall with “ext4” for root.

You haven’t said enough about what you want to do with this system, so it is hard to guess what would best suit your needs.

3

Why do you think so?

4

For future reference, what did I do wrong and how do I preserve column alignment in pasted text?

Yes

What is the easiest way to backup /home and the Firefox bookmarks?

50 GB for root would still leave me 40 GB for /home, which should be ample.

  • Play with/learnLinux
  • SFTP
  • Read e-mail
  • Access files on USB thumb drives formatted for JFS
5

… before you paste, click on the “#” icon above the message editor window. It is in the middle row, 3rd from the right. That will place your cursor between Code Tags, and you can then paste.

What is the easiest way to backup /home and the Firefox bookmarks?

Firefox Bookmarks are in a file “places.sqlite” in your Firefox profile, back that up. Also, in there, a subdirectory “bookmarkbackups”, you might also want to back up.

To back up your /home directory, if desired, you can use this command:

cp -R --preserve=all /home/. ***/path/to/backup/destination/.***

Look the command up

cp --help

for additional usefull options, as well as to understand the above command I show.

50 GB for root would still leave me 40 GB for /home, which should be ample.

FWIW, I have been using 20-GiB for root since openSUSE 11.0 series. I currently have 42.3, 15.0 and Tumbleweed, each with 20-GiB for root.

After all this time (and I do a lot of serious multimedia and more), none of these root partitions has even reached 1/2 full – actually, are all running with about 8-GiB used.

Of course, I am using ext4.

6

Basically, a simple typo. You used: CODE text for code block CODE

(brackets omitted, because I can’t insert them without messing up this post)

That is, you missed the “/” in front of the closing tag. Just an easy slip. I’ve accidentally done that myself.

7

If I do

cp -R --preserve=all /home/. /run/media/root/DFS1JFS64/Backup.home/.
cp -R --preserve=all /root/. /run/media/root/DFS1JFS64/Backup.root/.

before the reinstall and

cp -R --preserve=all /run/media/root/DFS1JFS64/Backup.home/. /home/. 
cp -R --preserve=all /run/media/root/DFS1JFS64/Backup.root/. /root/.

after the reinstall, will that restore too much?