Re: Overfull Filesystems how to solve?

[Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>]

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Hey Tapani,

> On 18 Jan 2020, at 10:30, Tapani Tarvainen <ipfire(a)tapanitarvainen.fi> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 10:57:08AM +0100, Jonatan Schlag (jonatan.schlag(a)ipfire.org) wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Daniel encountered the problem that his root partition was written full
>> because of the qemu addon being too big (200 MB). See bug #12268 for
>> details.
>> 
>> So he suggested moving the path /usr/share/qemu to /var. I do not
>> really like this solution as there are standards how the filesystem
>> hierarchy works under Linux. 
>> 
>> Furthermore, as the systems become bigger (eg. moving python3 to the
>> core) this problem will become more relevant to us. So I would like to
>> start a discussion on how to solve this. Moving things to /var can only
>> be a temporary solution. Should we force a reinstallation, which solves
>> the root of the problem?
> 
> One obvious alternative would be using LVM. Combined with a suitable
> filesystem like ext4, it makes resizing filesystems pretty trivial.
> It does add a bit of overhead but not enough to matter here, IMHO.
> 
> Another would be using ZFS, which solves the problem a bit differently
> (and arguably better), but it's not included in mainline kernels due
> to licensing issues so it would add maintenance work.
> 
> FWIW, I like LVM and tend to use it in all systems where disk space
> and allocation is likely to change.

LVM is generally a good idea. However it is not implementable on systems that are already running out of space.

Back in the day it seemed to be a good idea to have different partitions for / and /var. New systems will now just have one partition for /. Simply put, you will have all the space your hardware allows you and if you are running out, you are running out.

ZFS is not available on Linux.

-Michael

> 
> -- 
> Tapani Tarvainen