Tumbleweed disk usage

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1

I use Tumbleweed and update vis the command line using ‘zypper dup’. It all works fine, but each time I do it, the pre-update message (that gives the info about how much will be d/l etc) says that a further (in my cases) 800Mb will be used.

For e.g., 1.27 Gb is being d/l and approx 800Mb more space will be used by the OS when the current update will be completed.

So it is logical to assume that at some point that partition will run out of disk space. How can I prevent this or is the message misleading in that I will not run out of space?

TIA

DrT

2

I think you misunderstood this. It means that the download of the packages is 1.27 GB, but once the packages are installed the total amount on disk will be 1.27GB+800MB = ~ 2.1 GB. It’s because stuff from the packages gets compressed / decompressed. Still, this doesn’t mean your disk usage is growing, since most files from the update packages replace their previous versions.

To find out about diskusage, open a terminal window and do (example from my laptop, in dutch)

knurphtlaptop:~> df -hBestandssysteem Grootte Gebruikt Besch Geb% Aangekoppeld op                                                                                                                    
devtmpfs           2,9G        0  2,9G   0% /dev                                                                                                                               
tmpfs              2,9G     157M  2,8G   6% /dev/shm                                                                                                                           
tmpfs              2,9G     2,2M  2,9G   1% /run                                                                                                                               
tmpfs              2,9G        0  2,9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup                                                                                                                     
**/dev/sda5           27G     7,0G   20G  27% /                                                                                                                                  **
/dev/sdb1          110G      81G   25G  77% /home                                                                                                                              
/dev/sda4           15G     4,3G   11G  30% /srv                                                                                                                               
/dev/sda6           40G      20G   21G  48% /Muzickx                                                                                                                           
tmpfs              588M        0  588M   0% /run/user/473                                                                                                                      
tmpfs              588M      16K  588M   1% /run/user/1001

the line with jusr “/” as the mountpoint is where openSUSE lives.

3

Sorry for coming back to this thread on the late side, but I wanted to double check what the disk usage message said.

It says, “After the operation, additional ***MiB will be used”. This is unambiguous, it says that some additional ammount of disk space will be used after the operation. I get this after each time I execute ‘zypper dup’. It does seem strange that that would literally be the case as sooner or later one would run out of disk space, but that is what the message says and that is what it means.

DrT

4

Hello,

Some updates do require some additional space: new recommended packages, new versions bigger than the previous ones, etc. But that’s quite limited in general. Also, in the same time, some packages disappear from the repos, which are not always automatically removed by zypper (see zypper pa --unneeded and zypper pa --orphaned).

There are kernel updates though.

When a new kernel is available, it is installed in parallell of the running one. So it does require more space. And if older kernels are not deleted, used space won’t stop increasing, and that may be substantial, especially if you have also kernel-source (~500 MB).

But on openSUSE there is a service which is called purge-kernel and erases old kernels and other multiversion-capable packages at boot time. So during the reboot following the kernel update, removal of old kernels and other old multiversion packages will be triggered in background and space will be freed.

So at the end of the day, you shouldn’t run out of space because of that :slight_smile:

Regards,

Antoine

5

This says ***MiB used mean that the install will use that much space it does not say it will add that much space usage. In most cases a program replace the code from an old install so there is no additional space used nut the original space is used and maybe a little more or a little less. Also the space of the down loaded RPM has to be figured but unless you change a setting I believe the default is to delete the RPM once the install is done. but it is something you can change if you want.

So when it says ***MiB used it means that is the space used by the install not an additional space being used. As Antoine said there are exception in that by default two kernels are kept (again this is adjustable) so when you get a new kernel you will have up to 3 kernels installed until the newest kernel boots successfully at which point the oldest kernel will be removed.

6

I don’t really agree with that, or I have not correctly understood what you have said :wink: I may be wrong but to me:

“Overall download size: 84 MiB” means that 84 MiB will be effectively downloaded. Once packages are decompressed and installed, dowloaded rpm are removed from /var/cache/zypp (at least by default) so this 84.0 MiB disappear at the end.

“After the operation, additional 42 MiB will be used” means that 42 MiB will be effectively used after the installation. Size between old and new versions are compared, so this number is the final difference “size after - size before”. This figure can be high, especially on kernel update (because actually this a new package installation) but one must remember that a purge-kernel operation will be triggered on next reboot and some space will be freed.

That’s what I understand when I read the code too.