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[LesleyT]

hahha  I'm going through every line with the more command because I didn't know how to go by page.  It's cool though, because I'm learning so much about how linux is set up

I really haven't found my monster yet.  What size should a monster be?  I'm thinking that I might have created so many little monsters that I can't tell them from each other.

I'm going to flash.  But I though I'd do this anyway so I could learn what happened.

[olpc_franco]

I can't answer the file size question.  I was doing something specific and I was watching it grow with repeated df -k.

As for the du -h command:

Enter will give it to you line by line.... slooooooooooooooooooooow.
And the space bar goes page by page.

I just look for stuff over 10M, and breezed through the K files.  But that was for a specific operation and mine was really big and obvious.

[LesleyT]

NOW I find out about the space bar

heh

I got to see my whole file system.  Nice.  But I created little hidden monsters. so I guess everything on the machine must die to be rid of them

[olpc_franco]

I would do that if it was my machine.  If you already have the files available, when the machine reboots after it rebuilds, you are back in business.

Start putting those linux commands in a notebook! 

[LesleyT]

Dude, if this keeps up, I'll be a pro.

I knew -no- linux 48 hours ago.

I've gotten very little sleep too....  I think those two things are related.

[olpc_franco]

Little sleep?  You're an addict.  Go cold turkey now, friend, and mail it to me.  Otherwise you are sure to do the same thing over the weekend.

[GregYohn]

Hi!

Get the new 653 version OS and consider this a lesson for you!

[kbradnam]

Something I often do to look at file usage over a whole file system is:

su
du -a / | sort -n

Running this as su will allow you to calculate file sizes for files which you might not be able to as the default user (due to UNIX file permissions). The -a option to the du command lists every file on the file system. The forward slash tells du to start the search at the top level of your file system.

The second part of the command has a UNIX pipe ('|') which sends the output of the du command to the sort command, and the -n option will sort the values numerically.

This will give you a lot of output and the last few lines of the output will contain the biggest files/directories on your system.  If you only want to see the big culprits, you can restrict the output with something like:

du -a / | sort -n | tail -n 100

The tail command shows the last 10 lines of something, the -n 100 option asks to show 100 lines. This command will take a long time to run! Go and put the kettle on.

Keith

[olpc_franco]

Thanks Keith,

I'm going to play with that.  I appreciate the patience in explaining how the command and syntax works.

Franco

[Tortuga]

Following up on what Franco noted,

Start putting those linux commands in a notebook!  Grin

Perhaps it would make sense to create a topic on useful linux codes, as they come up or are needed to work out stuff. A one stop for code for beginners, like myself, and break that topic into areas, like memory, battery usage, etc. I'm sure there are books and articles out there, but having a source generated by our experiences seems to be of more value, at least to me.

[Grampa]

Franco, you said above that you install and run all your new programs on your usb drive. Could you please explain how you do that? Do you use the installroot option in yum? From the posts I've read, it didn't look like it was that easy or that successful. I've had to wipe and reload the XO's drive several times, and it would be nice if I could avoid having to reinstall all the extra programs each time.

Also, do any of the programs run from the usb drive get invoked as a sugar activity, i.e., from the frame?

[olpc_franco]

grandpa,

first off, I am only a linux beginner. But I'll try to answer you as best I can.

I try to keep stuff off the XO except for what is absolutely necessary.  An example of that are the couple of programs that I needed to have installed before I download Skype 2 (at least according to the directions).  Also, I have adjusted one config file so that I don't get the icons at the bottom of the screen every time my mouse accidentally strays down there.

I have several pen drives, and can run three off of a small usb hub.  I can run programs from any of them.  Also, I have a 120Gb external USB drive.

Now as to loading the programs.  This is from memory, so I hope others who have done this will correct me if I left something out.

I create a temp directory in the usb drive and from that directory I do the wget.  It puts the downloaded file into that directory.  Then I run the install and it creates a new directory in temp.

I next test the program to see if it works.  I cd to the new program directory which is within the temp directory:

cd <newprogramdirectory>

and run the new program:

./newprogram

I then create a new directory (remember, I am still working on the pen drive):

mkdir /media/<name of pendrive>/mplayer

Then I move the directory for my new program in temp, recursively, to the new directory.  I use the copy command just in case I mess up.  The mv command, as you probably know, is cut and move, not copy and move.  So:

cp -r New_Program_Directory /media/<name of pendrive>/<newprogram>

I then test it again.  If it works I delete its sister directory in my temp folder.

I have done this for opera and mplayer and I am currently doing it for Skype.  Having problems with the latter.  Gotta work on it a bit.

Right now I have 156 mp3s on another pen drive.  Those I run with totem which is a built in player  (but it needs a codec called fluendo).  I intend to put those on my SD drive since that is the hardest to get in and out.

The programs should also run from the 120Gb external drive, and that would mean more programs than I could shake a stick at.

Finally, these are run from a terminal window, and do not have their own icon in the Home circle.  They are instead represented by a terminal icon.

Did I cover all your questions?

[Grampa]

Thanks, this is very helpful. One clarification: when you "run the install," are you talking about rpm programs? Have you used other installation methods?

This is also my first experience with linux, so I've been flying a little blind here. I've seen several kinds of installation processes. The one I like best is yum, which finds and installs the program and the necessary dependencies. This is great because you don't have to locate the program or figure out which version to install, but it sounds like it wouldn't work to use yum to install onto the usb drive. An .rpm file appears to do an install, but you have to find the file first (I've installed several yum programs, but I don't know where I'd find them in .rpm form). Also, I don't know how .rpm handles dependencies. Finally, I installed the HP printer drivers using a .run program. This used up quite a bit of disk space, so it would have been nice to load it onto a usb drive. I suspect the .run file is some kind of batch file. As it turns out, it had problems, and I had to install the different program elements manually, including several using yum. I did eventually get it to work, however.

[olpc_franco]

"so I've been flying a little blind here"

Me too!  I am trying to keep a notebook of stuff I am learning.  I think I used yum for something but it's not in my notes.  I use wget to get the rpm and that gives me control over where it's going to go.  If I understand you correctly, the yum does it all?  If that's the case then you would have to find it and move the program and all its sub-directories to the new directory in the flash drive.

If everything goes to /usr/share in the installation, you could even make a /use/share on the usb drive.  I prefer just to make my program directories in the root of the flash drive.

You made a printer work?  You guru, you!

I reinstalled skype ver 2 in my pen drive and it works well. 

[Grampa]

Yes, yum does it all. For example the command "yum install firefox" finds and installs the correct version of firefox and all of its dependencies (except that olpc has excluded firefox from yum installs, so you first need to modify /etc/yum.repos.d/olpc-koji-ship2.repo). I haven't yet figured out how yum decides where to put the file. I don't think it would do to simply move the program and all its sub-direcgtories to the new directory in the flash drive, however. If it's anything like windows, it scatters files, links, registry entries, etc. all over the place, not just in a single directory. Moving the directory would break the links. It sounds like rpm locates the installation wherever you save and execute the .rpm file, so I will look into doing it that way. For example, I was able to locate an .rpm file for firefox.

Yes, I did make the printer work. In fact, my HP printer is a multifunction device, and it will scan and fax from the XO as well. It uses something called CUPS plus the HPLIP driver. The problem, of course, is that most "activities" on the XO do not have print commands. There are a couple of utilities that run in Terminal, including hp-print and hp-toolbox. The first will print a wide variety of file types, including pdf. The second lets you control just about everything on the printer. Web pages do not print very well in Opera (the fonts are wrong), but they print just fine in Firefox.