Linux

As a side note - You can config a linux system to run Samba, and then make a directory on your computer available to all Windows systems. So get big disks and put them on Linux - and share the disk space. I use it for backups. (Gotta have 2 copies of every file).

Reply to
Bruce Barnett
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Definitely. Using rpm to remove packages is very safe. It won't remove a package that another package needs, unless you force it to. And it's easy to re-install a package using yum, apt, synaptic, etc.

If you use a package a lot, and then delete it, and later want to restore it with the same settings and data it might be an issue. I tend to be super cautious and make copies in that case. But I think even this is safe, as the Unix convention is to store these sort of files in your home directory, and erasing a package won't delete these files.

If you are cautious - you can use

Reply to
Bruce Barnett

Definitely. Using rpm to remove packages is very safe. It won't remove a package that another package needs, unless you force it to. And it's easy to re-install a package using yum, apt, synaptic, etc.

If you are cautious - you can use rpm -q -l packagename to see the files that would be deleted if you erase something. Therefore you can use things like

rpm -q -l package | xargs ls -l to list the files, and rpm -q -l package | xargs du

to see how big the files are (and how much space you will use up. The second command will list the individual files. If you want to total up the numbers a simple awk program can add up all of the numbers.

rpm -q -l bc | xargs du | awk '{a+=$1}END{print a}'

This tells you how much space will be freed up when you delete "package"

There are other tricks for finding why the disk fills up. Log files tend to grow and grow. They need to be trimed and/or archived.

there are also files that are cached - apt/yum tends to take up a lot of space. There is a command to delete the cache - check the man pages.

You can find large files by going to a directory, like this

cd / du -s *| sort -nr >/tmp/du

This will create a file called "du" in the temporary directory /tmp

It will contain the largest subdirectories, sorted by biggest ones first. I suggest you send the results to a file "/tmp/du" because you may get lots of errors, and after the errors go away - you can do a "more /tmp/du"

Once you find out the biggest directory, cd to that directory and repeat. Eventually you will find the biggest file on your disk.

There are other ways to do this, but this lets you know where most of your disk space is used up.

I use a very old but useful script called "dusort" that I run once a day (automatically using cron) because it takes a while to run. It's simply

cd /; du | dusort >/tmp/dusort

This shows all of the directories, recursively, and sorts each one by the biggest first. The subdirectories are indented, so it's easy to find big files and big directories that consume disk space.

The file (and example output) is here:

formatting link

It was written in 1987, and still works great!

Reply to
Bruce Barnett

On Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:39:17 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner quickly quoth:

I still have 4 extra copies of Ubuntu if anyone wants one for the price of shipping ($1?). I never did get another box up for running Linux. It's the same version you got last year, Gunner. I ordered just after you posted about it. They come with both the live and the install CD versions.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

I'm sorry, I'm not a whiz at this, Gunner, but I think that _I_ would do what you suggest and just uninstall the packages you don't care about or dont use.

Hope this helps.

Lewis

*****
Reply to
limeylew

I do the same thing, but I am switching to NFS.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus19127

Its a computer that is running only windows.

Yup.

Those are based on recent downloads. It would appear that the new hip slick and cools distros get downloaded more than the stable stuff that is already installed on their puters.

Everybody likes to try new toys.

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

Kpackage manager and synaptic have the capability, any best removals? My system is currently loaded down pretty heavy with crap Ive no intention of ever using.

Cool. Thanks

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

Oddly enough..I never could get them to do a proper install. The live version worked well enough, but they would always choke and puke when installing to hard drive. I understand the new versions have no such problems.

My boxes tend to be "mix & match" with some wierd hardware..so its not surprising.

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

I'm rather happy with W2k, I have one box that dual boots W2k/ Fedora Core 5 (in place upgrade from FC4) another that run W2k only. A KVM switch ties the two plus a couple more that I seldom turn on to one monitor and keyboard.

For a different twist though, both windows installs run cygwin.

formatting link

Cygwin emulates *nix on windows.

The install that is always in windows runs exim for smtp, provides ssh access, ect using Cygwin.

Wes S

Reply to
clutch

We used to use cygwin at I place I used to work at, now closed unfortunately, worked really well. My current home system is Mandrake

8.2 and using XFS as the file system which I would certainly do again unless someone can mention anything better. Used to use Ext2fs, a pain if the system crashed, tried JFS and found it unreliable, XFS just seems to do its job and on the odd occasion the system has gone down or had a power cut its come back without a hiccup.
Reply to
David Billington

Amongst a lot of other things where I used to work (21+ years) now closed, I cared for the Novell network and used Caldera Linux on a couple boxes for email, dns, firewalling using ftwk

formatting link

Avoiding the Windows Server/Exchange money pit did limit my employment opportunies when the plant closed but sure saved the company money and grief. Oh forgot SQL Server in the list of Microsoft stuff I avoided, our two main apps used btrieve. You know way back in the nineties you could back up an active database?

I now work in a shop that is totally wedded to the dark side. I am so glad I fix/troubleshoot CNC and plant automation systems now. What I know today and yesterday retains value unlike being on the MS treadmill.

Wes S

Reply to
clutch

I've loaded Ubuntu 6.06 on a PIII-450 Abit BE6 motherboard with very good results. It was my old Windoze XP box.

I have another PIII-450 Abit BE6-II system that will not reliably boot or install linux off the (known good) CD. I can do network-based Linux installs on it all day log, but it WILL NOT install either Mandrake or Ubuntu from CD. I've tried several CD drives and installs don't work; normay data transfers to/from the CD dirve works fine (never seen an error). From all I can find doing a network install of Ubuntu is rediculously complicated.

I finally surrendered and installed Mandriva 2007 on that box. Copied the 4-CD set to the Ubuntu box and used the FTP install option in Mandriva. I'm upgrading from Mandrake 9.1.

BTW - Only point the Mandriva install at the four CDs for the initial install. I had to do a bunch of fixup when I installed with update and CD sites defined. For some reason it missed several packages (such as cups printing) with the update sites defined. Things seem to work fine if only the CDs and master sites are defined for installs and only update sites for updates.

Keith Bowers - Thomasville NC

Reply to
kabowers

Why do you think the Pentium, Celeron, Core2 Duo names came about?

I have a bunch of machines here. Running from DOS 6.2 up through Vista beta. Others are running RedHat, Knopix, Ubuntu, and a few others. Some are kept running for specific applications.

Reply to
Steve W.

Oh yea, compared to 98 that isn't hard to do. I bought a USB scanner in the late 90's and since nt4 didn't support USB I decided I would switch over to

  1. It lasted less than a day because I couldn't even install all my software before I hit the registry limit so the scanner was returned. Windows 2000 could run months without a reboot and could run a couple years at a time before a reinstall was needed. XP I had to reboot every few days and reinstall every 6 months. NT4 was more stable.
Reply to
Eugene

They weren't patenting a number, they were patenting the design inside the chip, but the court saw it as patenting a number. Imagine you produce something for the military and they come to you and say you must have a second source for your product or we can no longer buy it anymore. You go out and contract another company and they produce your product as a second source, then without you knowing sell the same product straight to the gov for a cheaper price and steal all your business. Wouldn't you try to patent your product?

Reply to
Eugene

According to Gunner :

Well ... I typically turn on the Windows box once per year -- to run the income tax software. When an affordable good income tax program appears on some unix, I can be totally Windows-free, and put some more interesting OS into that box. :-)

Enjoy DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

According to F. George McDuffee :

[ ... ]

If you care -- the daylight savings time change in the US next year won't be handled properly by Windows unless patched, and W98 is off support, so you can't patch it.

Win 2K would be in the same boat, except too many business users refused to change to WinXP, and forced Microsoft to continue support. (I wonder if they threatened to move to lunix or some other unix flavor? :-)

However, for all the unix boxen which I am currently running, all I needed to do was download the latest database and run zic (ZoneInfo Compiler) on the databases to install in each system. I just did that a few days ago. (*And* -- unlike Windows -- you don't have to reboot five times in the process of installing patches like these. It just keeps running.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

My main server..800 mhz dual p4s, with 1 gig of mem, and a 4 drive Raid (80gig hot swaps) and 2 outboard 40 gig scsis ran for 3 yrs on W2k, without a hitch or a hickup. Dual powersupplies etc.

Then 2 weeks ago, I booted it down, rebooted..and it hasnt come up since. Not even a blinking curser, not even a boot screen.

Damit.

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

Heard that somewhere before, MS did the same with NT4 regarding dropping support but relented and gave another year extension to the deadline. Should have happened by now but I haven't followed it. A company I new at the time upgraded from NT4 to W2k as they new they would have to sometime although nothing was wrong with the NT4 operation except MS pulling support.

Reply to
David Billington

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