10 pounds in a 5 pound bag..

[Brian McClendon]

In article <9008011308.AA17269 at avelon.lerc.nasa.gov> fsfacca at AVELON.LERC.NASA.GOV (Tony Facca) writes:
>
>I have a complaint to file, a bone to pick, an axe to grind..
>
>I am wondering if anyone has been inconvenienced by the rather puny / 
>partition of the Iris 3x0VGX systems running 3.3?
>
>Here is a df:
>  Filesystem                 Type  blocks     use   avail %use  Mounted on
>  /dev/root                   efs   30360   25522    4838  84%  /
>  /dev/usr                    efs 1144503  382654  761849  33%  /usr
>  /debug                      dbg  196848   10224  186624   5%  /debug
>
>Now, I can live with 2 Meg available, but it sure is annoying.  So far, I've 
>had errors trying to gen a new kernel (I saved the old one as unix.save which 
>did not leave enough room for unix.install), compiling some codes (I had to re-
>define the TMPDIR environment variable), and installing local software (we 
>use the /tmp directory to uncompress and untar).  Nothing terrible, just a
>bother.
>
>What appears to have happened either in the 3.2 -> 3.3 conversion or the VGX
>upgrade which increased the size of /etc/gl is that the number of blocks in 
>use went from around 17000 to around 25000.
>
>Has anyone dealt with this situation in manner they would be proud to present?
>I've heard of linking /usr/tmp to /tmp but we use /usr/tmp for something else.
>I may set the TMPDIR variable in /etc/cshrc, but I don't know what other
>surprises await.  Can I delete a couple of the files in /etc/gl without causing
>more problems (specifically, what are initvideo and setmon doing here?)  Are
>there other places to look for additional disk space?  Should I.. repartition?
>
>Note to SGI:  Perhaps it's time to increase the size of the root partition 
>when you format the disk?  Please don't get me wrong.  I don't mean to sound
>ingrateful, I probably wouldn't remember how to partition the disk myself 
>anymore if I had to.  And it's great that the disks come with eoe1 and eoe2
>loaded (with the ALL option!), but 4800 blocks won't cut it.
>
>Humbly Submitted for Consideration,  
>Tony Facca   |   fsfacca at avelon.lerc.nasa.gov      |     phone: 216-433-8318


OK, after talking to a unix expert (jwag), the word is there should be no
reason /tmp couldn't be a symlink to /usr/tmp.  The problematic socket that
was mentioned could be an X socket that will go away long enough while booted
single-user to create the symlink. You mentioned that you used /usr/tmp
for something else... would linking /tmp to /usr/slash_tmp be better?

Another solution is to login root NOGRAPHICS, cp -r /etc/gl to /usr/etc_gl
(or wherever), and symlink it back.  This will move back ~8K blocks.  
	(WARNING: You _must_ undo this change before inst-ing a new
	release of the software to avoid confusing inst about space 
	remaining/usage on the two partitions.)

initvideo is used by /etc/gl/grcond, so it shouldn't be removed. setmon(1)
is a user command to change the video mode and can be moved anywhere
you want as long as you remember where you put it.

We were aware of the issue before shipping 3.3.  After compacting
as much as possible, ~4K blocks was enough for us to work and build
our code, so we made the assumption (probaby bad) that it would be
enough for everyone.  We will work on this for the next release, but
it won't be ready for 3.3.1.

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   Brian McClendon bam at rudedog.SGI.COM ...!uunet!sgi!rudedog!bam 415-335-1110
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