Re: Problem with system update or something
Bret Busby <bret@busby.net> writes:
>>> <snip>
>>
>> It has occurred to me, that this ivolves multiple problems or symptoms.
>>
>> 1. The operating system and/or the web browsers ignore the swap partition,
>> and simply progressivley consume the RAM, until none is left free to be used,
>> causing system crashes. No known reason is shown for this, and checks have
>> been done, and all of the settings appear to be correct for causing swapping
>> to occur; it simply does not occur, and the system progresively runs out of
>> memory, until it crashes.
>>
How do you determine that swap is not being used? Have you run top (for
example) to see cpu and memory usage?
>> <snip>
>>
>> 8. I do not know how to cause space consumed by downloaded files, in a system
>> update, to be automatically freed, by purging either the files downloaded in
>> the system update, and or any files or other disk space consumed by the
>> update process, or, the predecessors of the files downloaded in the sytem
>> update. I assume (but am not sure) that they occupy space within the
>> Downloads directory within the home partition.
>>
Files downloaded by apt go to /var/cache/apt/archives. You can run the
apt-get clean command to delete them. If your home directory is a
separate partition, this will not help your problem.
>> <snip>
>
> Please "CC" any replies to my gmail account;
> bret.busby@gmail.com
> as this system will no longer run alpine on a two-way basis - the free
> disk space is now too low to receive any incoming messages.
>
> Debian 6 has now effectively rendered this computer unusable.
>
> df -h shows for the home partition, Size - 77GB Used - 73GB Free - 1.2MB
> but a warning dispalyed showing less than 1MB free.
>
Have you attempted to find out which directories under your /home are
taking up all this space?
$ du -s ~/.* ~/* | sort -k1 -n
This command will show you usage of all files/directories in your home
directory. Look at the last few lines in the output for anything that
is taking up unusual amounts of space.
> Amongst other things, it is unfortunate that Linux does not include a
> defragmentation utility. It may have helped a bit.
>
> It may have helped deal with, and, possibly overcome, the progressive
> comsumption of the disk space, by the operating system.
>
Nothing so far seems like it could be caused by filesystem
fragmentation.
> It is a bit silly, when a supercomputer (yes, this is what was, only a
> few years ago, a powerful enough computer that would have been classed
> as a supercomputer) can not even run a text based email application, due
> to the operating system.
>
--
regards,
kushal
Reply to: