19990302: solaris 7 on our pc

>From: address@hidden
>Organization: St. Cloud State
>Keywords: 199902262346.QAA22583 Solaris disk partition

Hi Alan-

>After some delays for a couple of days, we are continuing with 
>steps for ldm and mcidasx. 
>When installing gcc , using pkgadd, I got a series of messages
>that included the comment 'not enought space in device'.  I took
>this to mean there was not enough disk space in the file system
>being used (/usr).  gcc must be fairly large.

No, it's not that big.  The device that is running out of space
is /var.  When you run pkgadd, it first unpacks files to /var/tmp
and then installs them.  /var is only 29 MB so it is easily filled.
For the short term, I deleted /var/tmp
and created a link between /var/tmp and /var/data/tmp (which I created).
Then I ran pkgadd and added gcc to your system.  I also moved the
package from /usr/local to /tmp.  This is really no consequence, except
that it cleans things up.  I could just have easily installed it
from /usr/local once I made the change for /var/tmp.

Additionally, there was a gzip executable in /usr/local and one
in /usr/local/bin.  I removed the one from /usr/local.  I also
removed the gzip'ed gcc package from the root directory.  These
seem to have been left lying around from downloads, etc.

It also looks like netscape got installed in /tmp instead of
/usr/local.  You might want to reinstall it in /usr/local.

>The comment is preserved in /usr/local/gcc.txt on the machine ms51
>(199.17.31.240).

You still don't have reverse name lookup working for this system.
I included the IP address for my benefit.

>Recalling the changes you (Don) made last week, I am wondering if we
>need some further changes.  As of now, we have about 
>        6   GB in /var/data,
>         .7 GB in /usr;
>        1   GB in /home
>         .16GB in swap
>and a few smaller file systems, totaling about .2 GB or less
>
> total ~ 7.8  GB

When disks are formatted, you lose some space.  You have roughly
8GB of space allocated (see below).

>Questions.
>
>1. Where is my other roughly 2.6 GB ? does all this get used as overhead in
>the
>   install of solaris?  I am pretty sure the disk is 10.4 GB total

No.  There is a limit of 8 GB that Solaris can see on an IDE drive.  Mike
just contacted Sun about this and there is no way around it.  SCSI disks 
can use more space but with IDE you are limited to 8GB with Solaris.

>2. does all the diskspace have to be assigned?  I would guess not as during
>   the reorganization, you show a print from the partition command that shows
>   'unassigned' as one category.

The unassigned partition that has cylinders listed (part 4) is what is
being mounted as /var/data.  When I created it, I couldn't put 'data'
as a name, so I left it unassigned.  The key is to look for a line that
has no cylinders allocated:

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders        Size            Blocks
  0       root    wm       3 -   12       78.44MB    (10/0/0)     160650
  1        var    wm      13 -   16       31.38MB    (4/0/0)       64260
  2     backup    wm       0 - 1017        7.80GB    (1018/0/0) 16354170
  3       swap    wu      17 -   36      156.88MB    (20/0/0)     321300
  4 unassigned    wm     257 - 1017        5.83GB    (761/0/0)  12225465
  5 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)           0
  6        usr    wm      37 -  125      698.14MB    (89/0/0)    1429785
  7       home    wm     126 -  256        1.00GB    (131/0/0)   2104515
  8       boot    wu       0 -    0        7.84MB    (1/0/0)       16065
  9 alternates    wu       1 -    2       15.69MB    (2/0/0)       32130

So on your disk, part 5 has not been allocated any space yet.

>   I am thinking it would be better if we had a chunk of space as
>unassigned, to
>   be used where it is most needed when things like the above come up,
>   rather than to commit it all right from the start.
>   I assume it is fairly easy to add more disk space to a file system if it
>can come 
>   from space that is unassigned.

Well, you could do this.  You could repartition space taking some away
from /var/data (part 4) and assigning it to part 5.  You will want as much 
space as possible for /var/data.  You can easily fill up 4 Gb with a couple 
of days of McIDAS data.  Of course, you could always add in another disk that
is just for data. Disks are cheap now (ie 8GB for ~$150).  Then you 
could have lots of space on the primary disk for things like software.
It also makes it nice if the disk goes bad, you just lose your data.
The LDM will really hammer on the disk, so having it on a separate 
controller helps.

>3. To change things now, I assume I can use the example you provide in last
>weeks
>   change, where /var/data was created and /home was reallocated.
>   I am thinking, maybe 3 GB for /var/data, 2 GB in unassigned and add 1GB
>to /usr.

Unfortunately, you can't add space to an existing partition without
losing all the data on it.  You could create a new partition and mount
a subdirectory of an existing partition as that.  For example, you
could take some space away from part 4 (say 500 Mb) and assign it to
part 5.  You could then have part 5 mount as /local and create a link
between /usr/local and /local.  You would need to first move all the
files in /usr/local to /local, before deleting /usr/local and creating
the link.  In this way, everything that gets installed in /usr/local is
really put on the disk space in /local.  

Ideally, when you set up a system, it would be better to have one
big partition allocated to the root directory (/).  Then you 
don't have to worry about filesystems filling up.  If you are 
brave and have the time, you could repartition this disk to be
one big partition for / and one for swap.  That would mean
reinstalling everything, though.  If you don't want to hassle
with it on this system, you should make sure the others are
set up this way at least.  At this point, you are not too far
down the path of having things installed and you know the
procedures, so repartition and reinstallation should go
pretty quickly.

>4. I haven't taken the time to find the solaris documentation on what to do
>for things like this;  if you know the book and/or other reference, let me 
>know.

Mike suggests:

http://docs.sun.com/

>So, another little challenge.  Will wait for your reply

If you want help with the repartitioning, let us know.  

Don Murray