Mageia forum

Hi everybody,

I'd like to ask you about the "Free Disk Space" that we only have to install software in Linux.

In windows, you are not restricted to a limited space, which you must select before installing the system, and you can install your software anywhere on any drive that has free space.
but here in Linux, i think that you have to shrink and put aside a fixed amount of space before doing anything and use only that to install any new software.
Now It seems that i'm running out of space in my Linux and in the near future, i won't have any free space to install anything at all.
How can i overcome this problem?

Thanks

lightblue wrote:In windows, you are not restricted to a limited space, which you must select before installing the system, and you can install your software anywhere on any drive that has free space.

Yes you are restricted the same way as with any operating system installation, you have to go through partitioning during installation too.
But if you install linux after windows, your restriction comes from windows grabbing all the space on your harddisk for a default installation.

Please as root in a terminal show the output of

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fdisk -l
lsblk -f

Hi Doktor,
Thanks for the reply,

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Disk /dev/sdb: 111.8 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x1c00112d

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1  *         2048 117221375 117219328 55.9G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2       117226368 234436544 117210177 55.9G  f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5       117226376 192490829  75264454 35.9G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb6       192493568 205792649  13299082  6.3G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7       205795328 208427309   2631982  1.3G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb8       208431104 234436544  26005441 12.4G 83 Linux


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sdb                     
├─sdb1                   
├─sdb2                   
├─sdb5                   /media/win_d2
├─sdb6                   /
├─sdb7                   [SWAP]
└─sdb8                   /home


However, i mean in the Wwindows you can use other partitions' space to install new software, but here, for example, i have about 10GB free in my home partition, but have about 1GB free in the root, and i'm not able to use my home partition free space to install any new software,
right? or maybe i don't know how.

Well, you already use two partitions for windows that take up 90GB of the 110GB disk.
And with 20GB left it doesn't make sense to split that up into two partitions, you should consider reinstalling.

doktor5000 wrote:Well, you already use two partitions for windows that take up 90GB of the 110GB disk.
And with 20GB left it doesn't make sense to split that up into two partitions, you should consider reinstalling.

Thanks for your reply,

Yes I know that,
but i'd like to know two things:
1.is it possible to install linux in just one partion like windows (i mean root and home both), thus it's not necessary to split up our H.D.D beforehand.
2.can we extend root partition in order to have more space for installing new software?

thanks

lightblue wrote:1.is it possible to install linux in just one partion like windows (i mean root and home both), thus it's not necessary to split up our H.D.D beforehand.

Yes that is possible, and that's what I suggest you do with only 20GB. But in general it's better to have a separate /home partition as that makes distro upgrades or reinstallation much easier.

lightblue wrote:2.can we extend root partition in order to have more space for installing new software?

Yes that is also possible, but in your current situation that would be pretty complicated but doable.
You could use the free space from the home partition to shrink it, and increase the root partition with that.

Hi Lightblue,

how much unused space do you have in your windows partitons?
If you have sufficient maybe you could double your Linux space to 40G as 20G is a bit limiting as you have found..
Then, as Doktor5000 suggests, increase both your / and /home partitions for Mageia as upgrades are easier with a separate /home partition.
Do-able, but read :"a bit of work ".

this will reduce the requirement for repeating the problem in the future.

edit:
Looks like your Mageia is in an extended partition, so that might make life difficult resizing sdb1 and sdb2 and tranfering the free space to Linux.

Doktor and Benmc, Thanks for your replies.
I really appreciate that.

Then i'm going to reinstall Mageia in a bigger partition, but can you please tell me:
1. What is your recommended partitions' seize for a 55GB SSD drive, with 8GB Ram?
would a 8GB SWAP, a 20 GB root and and a 27GB root is a good portion?

2.could you please tell me what the best way to make a backup from my current system is? as i've installed many software and done many customizations, so i can restore it when i reinstall my Mageia.
(at least a back up from the list of my installed packages, software and settings)

Thanks

lightblue wrote:1. What is your recommended partitions' seize for a 55GB SSD drive, with 8GB Ram?
would a 8GB SWAP, a 20 GB root and and a 27GB root is a good portion?

In general you could go with the automatic partitioning which is done by the installer, it would give you nearly what you proposed. Details see

If you don't use suspend-to-disk (also called hibernate-to-disk) I'd even try without swap. You can easily add a swap file instead of a separate partition later on.
And depending on how many software/packages you want to install system-wide (maybe some games) I'd distribute the space between / and /home equally.

lightblue wrote:2.could you please tell me what the best way to make a backup from my current system is?

A fullbackup would be the best way as your installation is sufficiently small enough. Check e.g. redobackup - but that can only be done offline, e.g. via a live cd.
Or check e.g. Jim's solution: viewtopic.php?f=41&t=5957