Filled up my home dir

[bwtranch]

Hi! I was messing around backing up a DVD and I think I used all the space in /home. The partitions are as follows:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc19c6c29

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9 72292 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 10 75 530145 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 76 1032 7687102+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 1033 19457 147998812+ 83 Linux

I couldn't boot into Gnome without going to Archlinux Fallback. I was wondering, should a change/add another partition? Certainly not short on space. And what does fallback do? I thought I would get a terminal in recovery mode, but it booted right into the GUI and seems to be running fine. Thanks.

[fwojciec]

I don't know about the filled partition problem, I have no personal experience with such situations, but I can try to explain how the fallback boot option works in Arch.

The only difference between the fallback and regular boot options is the boot image which is generated by mkinitcpio whenever you install/update the kernel. The regular image tries to autodetect the modules that are required by your specific hardware, the fallback image comes with a full set of modules (something akin to what's on the installer cd image, I suppose) for troubleshooting purposes.

You can compare /etc/mkinitcpio.conf with etc/mkinitcpio.d/kernel26-fallback.conf to see how the configuration for each image differ.

As for why the fallback image would allow you to boot properly in spite of the fact that the /home partition was full (as opposed to the regular image) -- I've no clue

[bwtranch]

Thanks fwo, I'll check the differences between the two files. I was thinking, after figuring out what went wrong, of making just partition for /home. PS Like your new avatar

[fwojciec]

Thanks fwo, I'll check the differences between the two files. I was thinking, after figuring out what went wrong, of making just partition for /home.

I usually give about 15GB to root and the rest goes to /home.

PS Like your new avatar

Thanks It's I got it from this website: http://www.lukechueh.com/ -- it's full of really cool art.

[bwtranch]

You can compare /etc/mkinitcpio.conf with etc/mkinitcpio.d/kernel26-fallback.conf to see how the configuration for each image differ.

You know what was (is) funny? They were (are) exactly the same. I think the fallback.conf overwrote the old file. Basically fixing itself. It boots fine now. I really do think it fixed itself. That is so weird...
Edit: I wanted to make it clear that I think the old file overwrote the current config file as fallback was enabled.

[mozetti]

If you run into a situation where your /home partition is full and you can't log into gnome, you just need to delete/move some files out of the /home partition so it has enough free space. You can do that in two ways:

1) Use the fallback command line interface. This requires some knowlegdge of CLI commands/tools for mounting, moving or deleting data.

2) Fire up a LiveCD, mount your /home partition and then move or delete the files.

[bwtranch]

If you run into a situation where your /home partition is full and you can't log into gnome, you just need to delete/move some files out of the /home partition so it has enough free space. You can do that in two ways:

1) Use the fallback command line interface. This requires some knowlegdge of CLI commands/tools for mounting, moving or deleting data.

2) Fire up a LiveCD, mount your /home partition and then move or delete the files.

Appreciate that. Yeah, I'm going to re-partition at some point. I should've given /home more room. Live and learn. I think for now it's going to be OK, I thought about just going back to scratch and doing the tables right. But, that really would be a lot of work at this point. Good practice, though, I'd really have the Arch install down.
But, I don't have to put my files there anyway. All I need to do is make a dir to some free space. I was just surprised, (about all of it, really).
That fallback option is really cool.

[mips]

Appreciate that. Yeah, I'm going to re-partition at some point.

You should consider using LVM.

[K.Mandla]

You should consider using LVM.

If I could interject, under what circumstances would someone want to use LVM? I don't know much about it, except what I read years ago when I started using Linux, and decided I didn't need LVM. Now I'm wondering what the benefits are, and if I still don't.

[mips]

If I could interject, under what circumstances would someone want to use LVM? I don't know much about it, except what I read years ago when I started using Linux, and decided I didn't need LVM. Now I'm wondering what the benefits are, and if I still don't.

If you find yourself constantly resizing partition it is great as it can be done on the fly. It also allows you to span a partition over several physical drives.

My situation was I had 2x160GB internal drives & 1x500GB external drive. My /home was not big enough and I had data sitting in a seperate /home2 partition besides my normal /home. I also wanted to use my 500GB external drive as a backup for my internal drives simply mirroring or rsyncing /home to it.

The best way to achieve this was to create a small /boot partition, install LVM for the remainder of the disks, create /, create /home and span it across two physical discs (or logical volumes)

LVM is also usefull if you have many partitions or many drives. It's not for everybody but I use it on my desktop as I have a need for it, my laptop with a single 40GB drive does without it as there is simply no need for LVM here. LVM is used a lot in server environments but it also has a place on the desktop if you ask me.