UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

during installation i created four partitions mainly

/ 5GB
/home 1GB
/boot 100MB
swap 2GB

now since i didnt make the /usr partition all of the packages were being installed in the / partition ..now all the space in the / partition is filled ...i ran du -h ..i could see that / partition had been filled till 100% capacity ., is there a way where i can install new packages in my system ...even though i explored the possibility of creating another partition and renaming it as /usr and permanently mounting it under fstab.

Option 1: Uninstall other packages, clean up /tmp, ...

Option 2 (only possible if you've got space left on the drive): reboot to maintenance mode, deactivate the swap partition, remove the swap partition, create an extended partition, create 2 logical partitions, on of them swap, the other for /usr. Format the 2 new partitions, move anything below /usr to the new partition, and remount it at /usr. Make it permanent by adding it to /etc/fstab

Option 3 (if you've got a free extra HDD): create a partiton, format it, continue like above, starting with the moving of /usr

If your root partition is full, you're going have significantly bigger problems than just adding a new package - as a simple example, you won't be able to start 'vi' to edit anything!

yeah i was having that problems too but since i figured i could move the /usr directory on to the new partition hence i would be able to get some space free and hence i would be able to edit the files using vi