Very Computer

by **CodeFo** » Sat, 25 Jan 2003 10:27:16

So I set up a 200 mb root, 400 mb swap, and 600 mb usr partitions.
Continued through the woody install. Once apt got the initial list of
packages, it asked if I wanted to add another archive just in case. I
figures what the hell, sounds good to me. So I added a couple more.
I didn't do a full post-mortem, and I am assuming that it stuffed the
packages files in /var which probably got shoved in with root, but in
any case it sure filled whatever partition contained the package files
up to the very brim and overflowing.

Those additional archives cost you partition space you might not have,
so first-timers should maybe just stick with a single archive when apt
tries to talk you into some extras.

Not knowing exactly what installed and what failed I decided the
easiest course would be to just wipe the partitions and reinstall, and
the second time I skimped on those additional archives.

Now a happy Debian user with what I think is a clean install; the
floppy-based network install is pretty damn good imo.

by **Colin Watso** » Sun, 26 Jan 2003 03:31:24

>So I set up a 200 mb root, 400 mb swap, and 600 mb usr partitions.
>Continued through the woody install. Once apt got the initial list of
>packages, it asked if I wanted to add another archive just in case. I
>figures what the hell, sounds good to me. So I added a couple more.
>I didn't do a full post-mortem, and I am assuming that it stuffed the
>packages files in /var which probably got shoved in with root, but in
>any case it sure filled whatever partition contained the package files
>up to the very brim and overflowing.

Hm. /var/lib/apt/lists is a mere 12Mb here, with a 9Mb
/var/lib/dpkg/available (the latter of which won't grow when you add
additional mirrors to /etc/apt/sources.list). Although that's with only
unstable/main and unstable/non-US/main plus a couple of small
repositories, main is the largest of the components by far.

I suspect the core problem is something else. If you're tight on space
in /var, and you probably will be with a 200Mb /, make sure you run
'apt-get clean' regularly to clean out /var/cache/apt/archives after
downloading and installing packages. The size of packages typically
exceeds the size of package lists by orders of magnitude, and adding
additional archives only affects the package lists. So if 10Mb or so for
an extra mirror pushes you over the brink then you're probably going to
have problems later on anyway. I don't know how much memory you have,
but in my experience 400Mb of swap tends to be overkill, certainly on
installations that are tight on disk space.

The Dir::State::lists setting in /etc/apt/apt.conf (it's safe to create
it if it doesn't exist) controls the location of downloaded package
lists. Dir::Cache::archives controls the location of downloaded
packages. See the apt.conf(5) man page.

Cheers,

--

Very Computer

warning re Debian and apt for first-time users

warning re Debian and apt for first-time users

warning re Debian and apt for first-time users