On 2021-01-02 at 05:58, Andrei POPESCU wrote: > On Sb, 02 ian 21, 04:35:59, The Wanderer wrote: > >> / itself (excluding child filesystems) contains 23GB of data. 22GB >> of that is under /root. 17GB of *that* consists of backups of >> other data that isn't read-time-accessible to any other user - both >> because it isn't convenient to create the backup without that >> access, and because some of that data may be read-restricted for >> good reason and I don't want to put it somewhere more generally >> accessible in backed-up form any more than in its production form. >> Another 2.4GB of the 22GB is in a "packaging" subdirectory, and >> comes from an earlier point in my work with Debian packages, when >> there was a reason for part of the process to be done with root >> access. > > Storing lots of stuff under /root is your choice. > > In such a scenario I'd probably be using a separate /root partition > or more likely just put that stuff somewhere else (on some data > partition). Reasonable. I just haven't backfilled my partition arrangement since discovering this use case for doing so. >> /var (which is part of my "data" LV, because of its tendency >> towards large size, even though apparently the installed system >> won't operate correctly without its exact contents and so it should >> properly go in the "system" LV) contains 247GB - but that includes >> at least three at-least-partial copies of the rest of the >> partition, from a recovery operation from when the RAID array >> failed, as well as a mass redownload of the >> damaged-at-array-failure-time contents of /var/cache/apt/archives/. >> After I subtract off those, however, the "real" size of that >> partition is still in the vicinity of 100GB (give or take about >> 5GB) - of which 94GB is under /var/cache/apt/archives/. > > The size of the entire amd64 archive is 426 GB according to > > https://www.debian.org/mirror/size > > As far as I understand that includes oldstable, stable, testing and > unstable. According to https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases, oldstable is stretch, which (per that same page) was released in 2017. Going by the table of release dates on that page, this computer would probably have been installed with squeeze (in 2011, or possibly 2010 while it was still testing), and upgraded tracking testing ever since. > How many package versions do you keep around? Basically all of them. In theory I go in and delete the oldest unneeded ones from time to time, but in practice that hasn't happened much. On previous systems I investigated things like autoclean, but AFAIR I never identified a way to get such a mechanism to keep the .deb files I might want to use for reinstallation without keeping more than necessary, and after a while it stopped being worth the while. I believe I remember at least one mechanism which specifically provides a way to delete only .deb files which cannot be re-downloaded. While that's sensible from a clean-out-old-files perspective, from a keep-important-files one it strikes me as backwards; if they can be re-downloaded, then I don't strictly need the local copy in order to reinstall them. At the very least, I'd need to be able to keep the .deb files for whatever version is presently installed - and probably more than that, given that I do sometimes try installing a newer version and then decide to downgrade again (thus requiring not only the older version's .deb, but those for some of the packages it depends on). Once in the past, on a different computer with different partition layout, I managed to run out of space on /var because the APT package archive got too big. One of my motivations for the partition sizes I chose when installing this system was to avoid needing to do that ever again if I could manage it. >> Add those up and you get at least 120GB, even excluding the 22GB of >> data under /root and the extra copies under /var. >> >> Maybe 1TB of space for the installed OS is excessive, although I'm >> not entirely convinced - but I don't see how you get away with >> 10GB, except in the very short term after installation. > > Sorry, I was mistaken. > > My laptop is indeed on a 30 GiB partition, but using only 14 GiB. I > do (auto)clean the package cache more or less regularly though, even > on unstable installs. That's a bit more sensible, although it still strikes me as fairly limiting in terms of how much can be installed. > It's probably best to define what I mean by "installation". For me > this means that if I were to install the same set of packages on a > blank partition I would end up with about the same size. That's roughly the definition I was using, yes. > 100 GiB (excluding /home and other "data" storages) should be > plenty. Yeah, if you'd given that figure initially I probably wouldn't have even replied to begin with. It's less than I'd allocate, given the disk sizes I have to work with, but it's well within sane ranges for a sysadmin to choose even by my standards. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature