update failed as Hdd full. Now can't start PCLOS (SOLVED)

[gizmo-au]

I installed PCLOS XFCE on an old pc (celeron 800 500Mb ram 8Gb HDD) and donated it to the local community house. As there is no internet connection there yet, I bring it home occasionally to update.
During the ibiblio move I updated the source list but didn't update - it found no updates a the time which surprised me.

I tried again this morning, found a huge list of updates, told it to apply, part way through all progress stopped but no error message, when I selected to cancel, I got an error message saying that it failed due to hard drive full.

OK, I shut down the  computer, used live CD of PCLOS XFCE 2010.07 to open Gparted, reduce the home partition (which was almost empty) and then tried to expand the / partition, which came up as locked, unable to resize.

Now it won't start at all - I get to the login screen, login, get an error message about session lasted less than ten seconds, hard drive may be full.

What do I do now?

I wanted just to expand the / partition for now, but I have another spare HDD i can use which is 28 Gb so now I might as well change over to that.

I don't really want to do a whole new install, I spent a lot of time setting it up just right and I would have to install open office over again, my download limit is very close so that would be painful. What I would really like to do is rescue the current install, then (never  done this before...) use the appropriate software (which one?) to copy the current installation over to the larger HDD but with larger partitions.

I would appreciate your suggestions how to (1) rescue my current mess and get the original install working again, then (2) copy that install (software, settings, wallpaper, users/passwords ) over to larger partitions on the new HDD, possibly in a newer computer.

(I have a slightly newer computer I wish to donate too, it is AMD 1.2 Ghz, 750Mb ram, and I'd use it with the 28Mb HDD. When that is ready, can I just swap the HDD over?)

thanks for your suggestions.

[AS]

Hi,

I tried again this morning, found a huge list of updates, told it to apply, part way through all progress stopped but no error message, when I selected to cancel, I got an error message saying that it failed due to hard drive full.

You are warned that there is a chance your installation might be broken to some extent. You should really take into consideration a new installation, from a recent ISO (2010.12)
directly on the larger hard disk.

Now it won't start at all - I get to the login screen, login, get an error message about session lasted less than ten seconds, hard drive may be full

you can try to boot a runlevel 1 (single-user mode) and to delete files in /tmp /var/log/ to gain some few space, once you have obtained a few space,
you should try to gain more space by temporarily compressing (gzip) some user files (your own files, not system files).
Later you can decompress your files (gunzip), when you have really solved the space problem. Try to recover at least 500 Mb.
Once you are done, try to reboot and log in normally. (to reboot from command line, type in reboot)

About transferring your settings from one disk to another, much depends on what software you were using, it's likely each application can have it's own settings,
therefore specific info are needed for each application, well ask here... some help will come out.

AS

[YouCanToo]

Hi,

I tried again this morning, found a huge list of updates, told it to apply, part way through all progress stopped but no error message, when I selected to cancel, I got an error message saying that it failed due to hard drive full.

You are warned that there is a chance your installation might be broken to some extent. You should really take into consideration a new installation, from a recent ISO (2010.12)
directly on the larger hard disk.

Now it won't start at all - I get to the login screen, login, get an error message about session lasted less than ten seconds, hard drive may be full

you can try to boot a runlevel 1 (single-user mode) and to delete files in /tmp /var/log/ to gain some few space,

Be careful of what you delete in there.  A better practice would be only remove the files ending with .tar.gz or any ending with a number lie .1, .2, .3  
If you remove files like syslog, messages, which tend to get rather large, the system will complain about them being gone during startup. (as in not booting) The better way to handle this files would be to use the following as root from the command line  IE:  cat /dev/null > messages or cat /dev/null > syslog or whatever file you need.  You can only do this as the root user as the files in /var/log/* are owned by root.  Be warned DO NOT use the wildcard with this command, (cat /dev/null > filename) strange things might occur if you do.

You could also use a cron job to keep the /var/log folder free of all the compressed files, using something as follows
in the /var/lib/spool/cron folder create a file called root in this file you need the following

0 23 * * * rm -f /var/log/*/*.gz #Removal of compressed log files
0 22 * * * rm -f /var/log/*.gz  #Removal of compressed log files
@weekly rm -f /var/log/*/*.1
@weekly rm -f /var/log/*/*.2
@weekly rm -f /var/log/*/*.3
@weekly rm -f /var/log/*/*.4
@weekly rm -f /var/log/*.old

Save the file.
A listing of the /var/lib/spool/cron folder should show the following
[root@laptop cron]# pwd
/var/lib/spool/cron
[root@laptop cron]# ls -la
total 16
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Nov  5 15:36 ./
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Oct 19 18:06 ../
-rw------- 1 root root  371 Nov  5 15:36 root
[root@laptop cron]#

note the permission on the root file is 600

If you leave your system on 24 hours a day, cron will run the jobs at the time in the posted line (22 & 23 hours or 10-11 pm). If you turn off your machine daily then anacron (if set to run in PCC) will run the cron job during the bootup process.

once you have obtained a few space,
you should try to gain more space by temporarily compressing (gzip) some user files (your own files, not system files).
Later you can decompress your files (gunzip), when you have really solved the space problem. Try to recover at least 500 Mb.
Once you are done, try to reboot and log in normally. (to reboot from command line, type in reboot)

About transferring your settings from one disk to another, much depends on what software you were using, it's likely each application can have it's own settings,
therefore specific info are needed for each application, well ask here... some help will come out.

AS

[gizmo-au]

I have managed to get the original install working by using gparted to shrink the /home partition and giving that space to the / partition.

The first time I tried it I was not using Gparted correctly.

I am busy with other things right now, I will post again soon to give more detail.

Thanks as and youcantoo for your help.

[gizmo-au]

the first time I tried to use gparted to resize the partitions I didn't understand how to rearrange the partitions.

I have booted up from a live CD of PCLOS XFCE, started Gparted.

Now I have shrunk the /home partition to create some unallocated space,  moved the /home partition across to the unallocated space and moved the unallocated space to between the / and /home partitions, then expanded the  / partition to take over the unallocated space. This way I was able to steal about 2Gb from /home and give it to /.

Having done that I was able to start pclos, then go to synaptic, reload and install all updates. Amazingly the update files that had downloaded till the hdd was full were still there, so synaptic continued from where it left off. (it had already cached about 350 files, so the huge update of over 600 files continued off starting at about 350 files downloaded already - I was expecting to have to start over.)

thanks again.