Updating to 8.04 on the EEE (low disk space)

[sablefoxx]

Okay i've got an ASUS eee-pc (w/2Gb RAM) trying to upgrade to 8.04 from 7.10 but i dont have enough space on the internal (4Gb SSD) to download all the packages, i do have a 8Gb SD card, is there any way i can store the needed files on the SD card while it installs onto the internal 4Gb, and delete them when im all done?

[xerosis]

Hi,

If you mount your SD card to /var/cache/apt/archives/ the packages will install to there and you will have enough space for the install.

[sablefoxx]

So how do i do that exactly?

[natrixgli]

EDIT: You might wish to backup and clear out the SD card first to be safe..

Well you will have to rock out some command line for this one....

First you have to identify your card in the system.. I would pop it in, and in a terminal type 'dmesg' and press enter.

You will see a bunch of stuff, but what you are looking for will be towards the end, sort of like this:

[101338.462707] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 7823360 512-byte hardware sectors (4006 MB)
[101338.463706] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[101338.463714] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[101338.463718] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[101338.466323] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 7823360 512-byte hardware sectors (4006 MB)
[101338.466936] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[101338.466943] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[101338.466946] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[101338.466952]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2
[101338.647457] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

The part between the brackets [sdb] is what we're interested in, specifically the letter after 'sd'. On mine, it's sdb and probably on the Eee it will be the same, but check just in case.

The card gets auto mounted to /media/whatever, so then you're gonna need to unmount the card with:

sudo umount /dev/sdx1

(replace 'x' with the actual letter from the dmesg output.)

Then you can mount the card using:

sudo mount /dev/sdx1 /var/cache/apt/archives/

(again, replace 'x' with the actual letter from the dmesg output.)

Now when you run the upgrade, the packages will be stored on the card during the upgrade.

Hopefully my instructions aren't rubbish, please feel free to ask for clarification if they are.

-n8

[chewit]

I know that this is not releated to the question. But in that dir. I still have all the deb install files from my update. My update crashed after it installed everything. I didn't do the clean up part.

Is it ok for me to delete these install files?

[natrixgli]

I know that this is not releated to the question. But in that dir. I still have all the deb install files from my update. My update crashed after it installed everything. I didn't do the clean up part.

Is it ok for me to delete these install files?

sudo apt-get clean

should fix you right up. Check out 'man apt-get' for more info.

-n8