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    Discrepancy between size and available disk space

    Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by wearetheborg, Mar 27, 2009.

  1. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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    Just installed Lenny.

    There is a mismatch between size and available space when doing df:
    Eg, it says

    Code: 
    /dev/sda8 Size:163G Used:188M Avail:155G
    Actually I manually partitioned, and I remember seeing a 5% field in partition properties; I dont recall what it was, but it seems that I'm losing 5% for every ext3 partition.

    I also made a fat32 partition which shows full space as available
     
    wearetheborg, Mar 27, 2009
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  2. Charr

    Charr Notebook Deity

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    Ext3 has a pretty big overhead for journals and other filesystem tasks. You can double check by running the sync command, then df.

    If the space is important, you can try XFS or reiser3, both which have a lot lower overhead.
     
    Charr, Mar 27, 2009
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  3. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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    wearetheborg, Mar 27, 2009
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  4. archer7

    archer7 Notebook Evangelist

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    Debian doesn't do that. Ext* does. The default reserved space for ext3 is 5%, but that's unnecessary in most cases. System critical spaces like /, /root, /var, and /tmp should have the 5% reservation, but /home and whatever else storage partitions you have don't need nearly that much.

    You can change the percentage of reserved space with tune2fs:
    Code: 
    # tune2fs -m 1 /dev/sda2  ##<--- set reserved space for /dev/sda2 to 1%
# tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sda2  ##<--- set reserved space for /dev/sda2 to 0
     
    archer7, Mar 27, 2009
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  5. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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    Interesting, my Suse SLED 10 system ext3 filesystems dont ssem to reserve any space at all :confused:
     
    wearetheborg, Mar 27, 2009
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  6. archer7

    archer7 Notebook Evangelist

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    :eek: Really?

    Well, that's probably not surprising. Distros like Suse are not known for leaving things at default.
     
    archer7, Mar 27, 2009
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  7. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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    My SLED 10 has two partitions (created by me) / and /home
    / has capacity 7 GB, of which only only 82M now remains :eek:

    I really should upgrade now.... :D
     
    wearetheborg, Mar 27, 2009
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