Controling HD partition information

[reb]

Hi people,

I have a HD prtition information problem. 

First bear in mind that as a long time ms-win user, I am saturated with the "Windows Explorer" and its listing of partitions, dirs, sub-dirs and files.  Now that I am into linux, I find that there is little in common with the ms-win system, and now I am completely confused.

I partitioned my HD into three partitions, Sda1, Sda2, Sda3.  I thought I was setting up so I would have the VL  OS on Sda1, and all added programs on Sda2.  This way I would not lose programs and data if I screwed up my OS; something that frequently happens with ms-win.

I have an 80GB HD; and I followed recommended sizes to isolate the OS on Sda1 and progams and date on Sda2.
Sda1 = 6GB
Sda2 = 68GB+
Sda3 + 2GB  (swap)

I like games so, I downloaded the following.  Wine, Cedega, installer for "Cal of Duty, GOY" and "Cal of Duty. UO".  I then Installed "CoD GOY" , played the game and it was great, but  when I tried to install "CoD UO",  I got the error mesg "not enough room".  Much to my consternation, Sda1, which I thought would be just VL OS, jumped from approx 3GB used to close to 5.5GB used.  I didn't notice any increase in Sda2.

So why did everything I installed go on Sda1 instead of Sda2 where my /home partitions is located.  I still have 68.068GB free space on Sda2, and obviously I would like all the non OS data, programs, and games on Sda2.  I know there is a way to move all this info, but first I need to find it all, and then know how to move it.  Last but not least, How do control the location to  where something is installed?

If you need more info, jut ask.

reb

[Triarius Fidelis]

The installer for Call of Duty certainly chose to install in a directory outside of /home. Since I generally try to avoid games altogether, could you tell me where you downloaded the installer?

[lagagnon]

So why did everything I installed go on Sda1 instead of Sda2 where my /home partitions is located.  I still have 68.068GB free space on Sda2, and obviously I would like all the non OS data, programs, and games on Sda2.  I know there is a way to move all this info, but first I need to find it all, and then know how to move it.  Last but not least, How do control the location to  where something is installed?

Reb: there is a Linux Filesystem Heirarchy. Most installed applications go to places like /usr/share or somewhere similar, not to your home, just as when you install a Windows program it goes to C:\Program Files, not your "My Documents" folder. This is because most of the time you want the applications to be available to all users of the computer, not just yourself. It also gets very complicated to have applications in your /home directory.

Thus your first partition should have been made bigger, to account for installing extra software. This is stated in our Installation Manual in the second paragraph. You should run a Live Linux CD (VL, Ubuntu, Slax, Knoppix) and run "gparted". With gparted you should be able to shrink the sda2 partition and make sda1 larger. Good luck. 

[Triarius Fidelis]

It also gets very complicated to have applications in your /home directory.

For a single user it might be manageable. He could certainly try to install CoD on /home.

[bigpaws]

The thought is correct the problem you have is
that mentioned above the games installed in
another place.

Placing home on a seperate partition will work as
you have seen.

Games generally install in /usr/local/games

Find the games and where they installed and
then make your partitions.

Bigpaws

[reb]

Ok people,

I have just one more question before the holidays.  How do I find out what files I have loaded on Sda1 and Sda2.  With all the poking around, I still have not been able to find the answer to this question. 

To all of you good people,  MERRY CHRISTMAS !

reb

[Triarius Fidelis]

I have just one more question before the holidays.  How do I find out what files I have loaded on Sda1 and Sda2.  With all the poking around, I still have not been able to find the answer to this question. 

What does 'df' say? I can interpret the output of that.

BTW, God Jul och ett gott nytt år to you as well.

[bigpaws]

Check /var/log/packages

Bigpaws

[reb]

hanumizzle,

Here is the output of df:

vector:/~
rebel:$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              4883572   4204520    679052  87% /
/dev/sda2             71310348   1587904  69722444   3% /home
tmpfs                   515104         0    515104   0% /dev/shm

It tells me how much in on each partition, but it doesn't tell me 'what'.  If you have a crystal ball, let me know what it is.   

reb

[reb]

Hi Bigpaws:

The output from /var/log/packages contains close to 240 files.  They are all colored green with a (*) following them.  If that is what a package looks like then there are a bunch.  What am I looking for?

reb

[reb]

Hi lagagnon:

Thus your first partition should have been made bigger, to account for installing extra software. This is stated in our Installation Manual in the second paragraph. You should run a Live Linux CD (VL, Ubuntu, Slax, Knoppix) and run "gparted". With gparted you should be able to shrink the sda2 partition and make sda1 larger.

The only VL cd I have is the iso I burned to disk with my wifes' windows machine.  Is a 'Live Linux CD' the only way to obtain 'gparted' ?

Also, since my HD is only 80GB, what do you recommend for the size of sda1 and sda2.

Finally, Can you move files from one partition to another?  If so, how?  I'm use to the mindless "drag and drop" of ms-win.

hanumizzle:

I downloaded the installers to my 'dwnldbin'.  Here is the path:  /home/rebel/dwnldbin/... When I installed the game I don't remember if I had a choice to choose where it was installed but the game was installed to:  /home/rebel/cod/.  cod is the game "Call of  Duty".

I hope this is enough information to get things going again.  I'm still spongy from my part in fixing Christmas dinner.  We served over 30 people consisting of our parents, brothers and sisters, grand children and great grand children, which included all their girl friends and boy friends as well.
.     It was fun, but I'm really glad the whole thing is over.  I intend to sleep through "New Years"   

reb

[exeterdad]

Glad to hear you were with loved ones during Christmas Reb, have to admit I was wondering about that    Don't envy you hosting the event, as fun as it may be.

I haven't any advise on this issue, these guys here are to be trusted though.  I do want to explain the live disk thing to you though. 

You need to be running gparted on a live disk because gparted and the Linux system running it will be running completely in ram.  You can't be running Linux on the partitions you are about to be shifting around.  I have used this TINY live cd with gparted in the past and loved it. http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/  Remember to burn as a ISO rather then data cd as you will be booting from it.

Good luck my friend, you'll be fine 

[reb]

lagagnon and anyone else who has ideas about partition sizes.

I downloaded the gparted live cd from  Sourceforge, and burned it to an image.  Now I would like to tap your knowledge for partition sizes.

I have an 80GB sata HD and I need to resize my sda1 and make it larger and shrink my sda2.   What are your suggestions on the sizes.

At this point I'm open to any and all suggestions. 

reb

[bigpaws]

From your original post you were asking about
where the extra things you installed went.

The best thing to do is to find these things.

You can use locate to do this. Open a terminal
su then updatedb.

Then exit as root and then locate <name of game> for
example. This will give you an idea where things are going.

From there you can then decide to partition so if your
games are in /usr/local/games you can create a partition
for them then if you lose the OS you have the data.

I have 8 partitions on my system to accomplish the
above.

HTH

Bigpaws

[Freston]

Hypothetically speaking, and please correct me if I'm wrong... But wouldn't it be possible to symlink /usr/local/games to /home/subdir?

Or... again hypothetically, mount /dev/sda2 on two places. /home and /usr/local/games?

That way reb doesn't have to splice off his drive any further.

Note! I know these are possibilities, but I am completely unaware of what may happen as side effects. I don't consider such a route to be inherently safe. Proceed with caution