Space low on root partition, /usr/lib

[agostonbejo]

Hi!

I have the following problem: my root partition (/) starts to fill up completely. I checked it out and what takes up most of the space on it is the /usr folder, and inside of that the biggest one is /usr/lib (~2Gig). I've been wondering how I could solve the situation:

a)
By using some partition editor to increase the size of the / partition -- but there are always these warnings that data loss is possible etc. that I'm not really sure how reliable this would be. Also, then I'd have to create/download and boot some rescue CD I suppose in order not to have the partitions on the hard drive mounted... lots of hassle, great risk.

b)
I had an idea that I'd move over some folders from /usr/lib to some other partition where there was enough space and created soft links to them in /usr/lib. (I wouldn't dare move the whole /usr/lib folder because I'm not sure whether there is something in there that's actually needed to mount the partition I would move it to -- which would be pretty much of an own goal.)
The problem here is that if I only move individual folders (e.g., "Adobe"), then they will have relative references to other files like ../../../../../liblber-2.4.so.2 which are only present in the original /usr/lib, of course.

Any ideas how this could be solved relatively simply?

Thanks,
Agoston

[oz]

Hello

If it were me... I'd use FSArchiver or some other app to create an archive of the current system, then use Gparted to resize the current partitions according to your needs. If your data should become corrupted, you can use the archive that you created to restore all the data to the resized partitions. Note that you can find FSArchiver and Gparted on the Parted Magic LiveCD.

[Mudgen]

^This. I have nightly rsync onto an external USB drive in case anything goes awry, easy to do on an ad hoc basis as well.