New User Help

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1

Ok, I have searched, read, and still having some trouble understanding, I hope someone can help me.

I am not 100% new to openSuse however I never fully used it until now. My good laptop died on me and I was given an older HP Compaq. On a fresh install Tumbleweed works great. However, with daily use, my root drive seems to fill very fast.

Granted, I do not have a lot of RAM or a large HD in this laptop, it only allows for me to set the root partition to 14 gig max, even with a fresh install. I have tried everything I have read with regard to removing temp files, changing partitions etc and nothing is working.

I tried openSuse on another, newer, HP Pavilion DV7 however it overheats the laptop very quickly so I cannot fully test anything on a much better computer.

In 1 day, after system updates, I went from 1.2 gig of free space down to 29MiB and as low as 1.3MiB and running VERY slow. As I am stuck with this laptop for a while I would like to get it working or at least functional. I have no real add-ons installed, just a video converter, audio converter but was very sparing on what was installed. I mainly needed just basics, server, mysql, php, an HTML editor and multi media editors/converters to do some web stuff.

13.2 seemed to handle partitioning better and I really didn’t have this issue with that version. Is tumbleweed too much for older laptops? Is there a way to change partition sizes without losing any information? I already have some things I would not want to have to re-program. How can I clean temp files on re-boot as I have read and have it work?

Please use basic terminology as Linux is still very new to me.

This laptop I have did come with Windows XP installed so it’s not a total dog but very close to it LOL. I really don’t want to go back to windows and I hope I can learn this enough that I can install it on my new laptop when I can get one. I am sooooooo tired of Windows. :slight_smile:

Thanks in advance for any help and sorry if this is repetitive but I really could not find anything about using on older laptops with smaller HD and ram. lol!

2

Hi
Assuming you selected the default filesystem btrfs, then it’s complemented by snapper which on such a small / should really be disabled…

As root user run;


vi /etc/snapper/configs/root

And set;
NUMBER_LIMIT="1"
NUMBER_LIMIT_IMPORTANT="1"

Then run;
/etc/cron.daily/suse.de-snapper
/etc/cron.weekly/btrfs-balance.sh
btrfs fi usage /

Post back the output from the last command above and will look at some more tweaks after you run through the above.

3

I used terminal in super user mode, was that correct? If so this is what was showing after the 1st line. It would not allow me to edit or change anything.


# subvolume to snapshot
SUBVOLUME="/"

# filesystem type
FSTYPE="btrfs"


# users and groups allowed to work with config
ALLOW_USERS=""
ALLOW_GROUPS=""

# sync users and groups from ALLOW_USERS and ALLOW_GROUPS to .snapshots
# directory
SYNC_ACL="no"


# start comparing pre- and post-snapshot in background after creating
# post-snapshot
BACKGROUND_COMPARISON="yes"


# run daily number cleanup
NUMBER_CLEANUP="yes"

# limit for number cleanup
NUMBER_MIN_AGE="1800"
NUMBER_LIMIT="10"
NUMBER_LIMIT_IMPORTANT="10"


# create hourly snapshots
TIMELINE_CREATE="no"

# cleanup hourly snapshots after some time
TIMELINE_CLEANUP="yes"

# limits for timeline cleanup
TIMELINE_MIN_AGE="1800"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_HOURLY="10"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_DAILY="10"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_WEEKLY="0"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_MONTHLY="10"

# cleanup empty pre-post-pairs
EMPTY_PRE_POST_CLEANUP="yes"

# limits for empty pre-post-pair cleanup
EMPTY_PRE_POST_MIN_AGE="1800"

Should I try the etc editor in YAST to change those LIMITS? I will wait for an answer to run those other commands in case I need to change those limits before running. Thank you for helping me :slight_smile:

PS - Yes, I used default setting on install as I really don’t know enough to do anything custom

4

Hi
Did you start the vi editor in the ‘super user terminal’?

If so, the use the arrow keys to navigate to the 0 in 10 the line NUMBER_LIMIT and press the x key to delete the 0 in 10, repeat for the next line, then press the esc key then : w q to (w)rite and (q)uit the vi editor. the run the next lot of commands.

5

Yes, I was in super user mode.

I changed the numbers and ran the other lines and this is what printed:

linux-mayq:~ # vi /etc/snapper/configs/root
linux-mayq:~ # /etc/cron.daily/suse.de-snapper
linux-mayq:~ # /etc/cron.weekly/btrfs-balance.sh
-bash: /etc/cron.weekly/btrfs-balance.sh: No such file or directory
linux-mayq:~ # btrfs fi usage /
Overall:
Device size: 14.63GiB
Device allocated: 14.63GiB
Device unallocated: 1.00MiB
Device missing: 0.00B
Used: 13.11GiB
Free (estimated): 533.05MiB (min: 533.05MiB)
Data ratio: 1.00
Metadata ratio: 2.00
Global reserve: 224.00MiB (used: 0.00B)

Data,single: Size:12.32GiB, Used:11.80GiB
/dev/sda2 12.32GiB

Metadata,DUP: Size:1.12GiB, Used:671.09MiB
/dev/sda2 2.25GiB

System,DUP: Size:32.00MiB, Used:16.00KiB
/dev/sda2 64.00MiB

Unallocated:
/dev/sda2 1.00MiB

I am up to 533MiB free now. Still much less than the original install, I believe there was 2.1 gig free after the install and few add on’s I installed. Getting there :good::good:

EDIT: My other partition is at 20 gig, is there a way to lessen that and add it to the root? I tried the YAST partitioner but it will not let me unmount it. It is also a different file system. (I have to look to see what it is though)

6

On Thu 31 Mar 2016 08:56:02 PM CDT, michellebrooks wrote:

malcolmlewis;2772784 Wrote:
> Hi
> Did you start the vi editor in the ‘super user terminal’?
>
> If so, the use the arrow keys to navigate to the 0 in 10 the line
> NUMBER_LIMIT and press the x key to delete the 0 in 10, repeat for the
> next line, then press the esc key then : w q to (w)rite and (q)uit the
> vi editor. the run the next lot of commands.
Yes, I was in super user mode.

I changed the numbers and ran the other lines and this is what printed:

linux-mayq:~ # vi /etc/snapper/configs/root
linux-mayq:~ # /etc/cron.daily/suse.de-snapper
linux-mayq:~ # /etc/cron.weekly/btrfs-balance.sh
-bash: /etc/cron.weekly/btrfs-balance.sh: No such file or directory
linux-mayq:~ # btrfs fi usage /
Overall:
Device size: 14.63GiB
Device allocated: 14.63GiB
Device unallocated: 1.00MiB
Device missing: 0.00B
Used: 13.11GiB
Free (estimated): 533.05MiB (min: 533.05MiB)
Data ratio: 1.00
Metadata ratio: 2.00
Global reserve: 224.00MiB (used: 0.00B)

Data,single: Size:12.32GiB, Used:11.80GiB
/dev/sda2 12.32GiB

Metadata,DUP: Size:1.12GiB, Used:671.09MiB
/dev/sda2 2.25GiB

System,DUP: Size:32.00MiB, Used:16.00KiB
/dev/sda2 64.00MiB

Unallocated:
/dev/sda2 1.00MiB

I am up to 533MiB free now. Still much less than the original install,
I believe there was 2.1 gig free after the install and few add on’s I
installed. Getting there :good::good:

Hi
Ok, so the link is missing or btrfsmaintenance is not installed, try
(note it may take awhile to run/finish);


/usr/share/btrfsmaintenance/btrfs-balance.sh

If the above runs it should clean up a bit more, if it still shows an
error, then it needs installing;


zypper in btrfsmaintenance
/usr/share/btrfsmaintenance/btrfs-balance.sh
btrfs fi usage /

If it’s still not show much free space, then try;


btrfs fi balance start -dusage=5 /

If you see “Done, had to relocate 0 out of XX chunks” then increase to
10 and so on until you see at least 1 chunk relocated. Again, this may
take some time so don’t panic :wink:

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 SP1|GNOME 3.10.4|3.12.53-60.30-default
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please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

7

Hi, just my 2 cents since I’m running Leap 42.1 on a 2007 HP-Compaq with 2GB RAM and Core2Duo that might be similar, with reasonable performance for everyday use.
I had to select Ext4 for the /root partition on that box to have acceptable performance, BTRFS was a pain with the original slow disk even after tweaking. I used 10-15 GB for /root without problems with Ext4 and that would fit the available room the OP has.
The standard install should take some 6 GB on Ext4, leaving enough room for custom packages if needed.
I don’t see any real benefit of using BTRFS on those small, slow disks with a smaller bootloader patch as well (WinXP formatted…).

So, unless Malcolm comes up with some of his magic, I would recommend:

  • reinstall using Ext4 for /root and keep the /home prtition untouched (please ask if you need help doing so);
  • or swap in a recent disk (and reinstall as well, sorry).
    My test laptop came to a new life once a small SSD was swapped in, the real bottleneck was in the original disk and no tweaking of BTRFS got around that.
8

Hi
That was my overnight thoughts as well, else use btrfs and just have a / nothing else and turn snapper off at install time, but like you say in this case ext4 is probably better if a new install…

@michellebrooks for the DV7, I’m assuming an ATI gpu, if so there is a tweak to set the power level for the gpu to keep things cool, my experience with a DV7 was they ran hot anyway…

9

Thank you both! I have my install disk packed atm, we are getting ready to move in a couple months. So, for the time being, I will try Malcom’s fix and then when I get moved try to re-install with a different format as Orso suggested.

Thank you both so much for the help :good::smiley:

Yes, the DV7 runs very hot even with windows 7 that it came with. I wish I could try that tweak however that machine is dead and that is the reason I am on this old HP Compaq. Once we get moved and settles I may break down and get a new laptop. This OS has come a long way since the last time I have used it and I am loving it!!! I think is was version 11 or 12 when I last tried to switch to openSuse/Linux, it’s been about 8 years.

Anyway, have a great weekend guys and thanks again for the help.