How to install LibreOffice in Oracle Linux Release 7 Update 2

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May 22, 2010
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How do you install LibreOffice in Oracle Linux Release 7 Update 2 because my first though was to try repositories, but it said package not found. Therefore, I went to Open Document Foundations website and downloaded the rpm, but when I apparently successfully installed it after reading the readme the following happened when I tried to run it or find it:


[username@localhost ~]$ sudo rpm -Uvh /run/media/username/CORSAIR/Downloads/LibreOffice/LibreOffice_5.2.4.2_Linux_x86-64_rpm/RPMS/*.rpm
Preparing... ################################# [100%]
installing package libreoffice5.2-ure-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 12KB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-core-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-en-US-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-base-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-impress-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-writer-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-en-US-base-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-en-US-calc-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-en-US-math-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-en-US-res-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-en-US-writer-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-calc-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-draw-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-images-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-math-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-pyuno-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-librelogo-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-math-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-base-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-calc-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 2MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-dict-en-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-dict-es-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-dict-fr-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-draw-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-en-US-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-impress-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-writer-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-ogltrans-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-postgresql-sdbc-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-extension-beanshell-script-provider-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-extension-javascript-script-provider-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-extension-mediawiki-publisher-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-extension-nlpsolver-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-extension-pdf-import-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-extension-report-builder-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-filter-data-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-gnome-integration-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-graphicfilter-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-kde-integration-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-onlineupdate-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-ooofonts-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-ooolinguistic-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-python-script-provider-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libobasis5.2-xsltfilter-5.2.4.2-2.x86_64 needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
installing package libreoffice5.2-freedesktop-menus-5.2.4-2.noarch needs 4MB on the /var filesystem
[username@localhost ~]$ sudo find / -iname "librewriter"find: ‘/run/user/1000/gvfs’: Permission denied
[username@localhost ~]$ librewriterbash: librewriter: command not found...
[username@localhost ~]$

Now what should I do?
 
the "needs #MB on the /var filesystem" reads like an out of space error. Do you have enough free space on the partition that contains /var? (could you post the output of "df -h" ?)
 
the "needs #MB on the /var filesystem" reads like an out of space error. Do you have enough free space on the partition that contains /var? (could you post the output of "df -h" ?)

Sure, do I need to do this command > /var to make space.
 
the "needs #MB on the /var filesystem" reads like an out of space error. Do you have enough free space on the partition that contains /var? (could you post the output of "df -h" ?)

Here is the output of df -h:


[username@localhost ~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ol-root 620G 4.8G 615G 1% /
devtmpfs 12G 0 12G 0% /dev
tmpfs 12G 204K 12G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 12G 1.3G 11G 11% /run
tmpfs 12G 0 12G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/ol-var 4.0G 4.0G 16K 100% /var
/dev/sda1 494M 200M 294M 41% /boot
/dev/sda2 200M 0 200M 0% /boot/efi
/dev/mapper/ol-u01 520G 33M 520G 1% /u01
/dev/mapper/ol-u02 520G 33M 520G 1% /u02
/dev/mapper/ol-home 120G 89M 120G 1% /home
/dev/mapper/ol-tmp 4.0G 34M 4.0G 1% /tmp
tmpfs 2.4G 40K 2.4G 1% /run/user/1000
tmpfs 2.4G 0 2.4G 0% /run/user/986
tmpfs 2.4G 0 2.4G 0% /run/user/0
[username@localhost ~]$

Looks like I was right because the var partitions mount point is /var, so if I do > /var it will erase all the contents on that partition and free up space considering it is redirecting nothing into /var and therefore erasing it. I'm kinda not sure so I'll wait until you reply though, but I think I need to do > /var/ because i think > /var might mess things up.
 
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Yeah. The cause of your issue is that /var is full. With only 4GB allocated to it, I'm not really sure what you could free up easily.

Unfortunately /var contains a lot of system and data files so you can't really do random purging of directories. /var also houses /var/log which is where your log files will be found and will grow over time.

Easiest solution may be to re-install and be more generous with some of the space allocation. Allocating 20GB or so to /var will keep the system satisfied for a while. You could also just not specify a separate partition for /var and let it ride on the generous 615GB root partition.

Next idea, that I think may be a large undertaking for you. You could work through using LVM to expand /dev/mapper/ol-var.
You'll want to do some reading and practicing on a VM before trying it on the live system. Also, you'll need some free space in your volume group to add to it, so if everything is allocated then you could be looking at having to shrink a volume in order to reallocate it to /dev/mapper/ol-var. It's achievable, and a good learning exercise. However, it's a good source of frustration along the way until you get the tools and concepts.

Personally, I'd just go with a re-install this early on in the build.
 
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Yeah. The cause of your issue is that /var is full. With only 4GB allocated to it, I'm not really sure what you could free up easily.

Unfortunately /var contains a lot of system and data files so you can't really do random purging of directories. /var also houses /var/log which is where your log files will be found and will grow over time.

Easiest solution may be to re-install and be more generous with some of the space allocation. Allocating 20GB or so to /var will keep the system satisfied for a while. You could also just not specify a separate partition for /var and let it ride on the generous 615GB root partition.

Next idea, that I think may be a large undertaking for you. You could work through using LVM to expand /dev/mapper/ol-var.
You'll want to do some reading and practicing on a VM before trying it on the live system. Also, you'll need some free space in your volume group to add to it, so if everything is allocated then you could be looking at having to shrink a volume in order to reallocate it to /dev/mapper/ol-var. It's achievable, and a good learning exercise. However, it's a good source of frustration along the way until you get the tools and concepts.

Personally, I'd just go with a re-install this early on in the build.

I thought the largest you could make /var was 4 GB, so did this change in 7.0 or above.
 
I thought the largest you could make /var was 4 GB, so did this change in 7.0 or above.
Nope. I've never heard that as a rule. I think the only things outright recommended to keep smallish would be your swap partition and /boot. It used to be recommended for swap to be 2x the ram in the system, but beyond 4gb doesn't do much unless you'd actually get into debugging a crash. if you use 4gb of swap you're probably in a hosed state already.

Feel free to set /var to a larger/usable amount.

This seems like a fairly descriptive page for what /var is used for - http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/var.html
Top page for talking about the FS hierarchy - http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/
 
Yeah. The cause of your issue is that /var is full. With only 4GB allocated to it, I'm not really sure what you could free up easily.

Unfortunately /var contains a lot of system and data files so you can't really do random purging of directories. /var also houses /var/log which is where your log files will be found and will grow over time.

Easiest solution may be to re-install and be more generous with some of the space allocation. Allocating 20GB or so to /var will keep the system satisfied for a while. You could also just not specify a separate partition for /var and let it ride on the generous 615GB root partition.

Next idea, that I think may be a large undertaking for you. You could work through using LVM to expand /dev/mapper/ol-var.
You'll want to do some reading and practicing on a VM before trying it on the live system. Also, you'll need some free space in your volume group to add to it, so if everything is allocated then you could be looking at having to shrink a volume in order to reallocate it to /dev/mapper/ol-var. It's achievable, and a good learning exercise. However, it's a good source of frustration along the way until you get the tools and concepts.

Personally, I'd just go with a re-install this early on in the build.

Redhat recommend partitioning scheme says the following:


Table 9.3. Minimum partition sizes

Directory Minimum size
/ 250 MB
/usr 250 MB
/tmp 50 MB
/var 384 MB
/home 100 MB
/boot 250 MB

Here:

https://access.redhat.com/documenta...tallation_Guide/s2-diskpartrecommend-x86.html
 
Redhat recommend partitioning scheme says the following:


Table 9.3. Minimum partition sizes

Directory Minimum size
/ 250 MB
/usr 250 MB
/tmp 50 MB
/var 384 MB
/home 100 MB
/boot 250 MB

Here:

https://access.redhat.com/documenta...tallation_Guide/s2-diskpartrecommend-x86.html

Uh, that's MINIMUM for it to work. Add any data and you're out of space.

You need to stop reading instructions and following them blindly. Try to understand the context and apply the information instead of following it.
 
Uh, that's MINIMUM for it to work. Add any data and you're out of space.

You need to stop reading instructions and following them blindly. Try to understand the context and apply the information instead of following it.

What do you mean because according to that 4 GB is hardly minimum and what instructions as well because it doesn't really say how to determine how big I should make /var or any partition other than only allocate space as needed, which isn't very helpful?
 
What do you mean because according to that 4 GB is hardly minimum and what instructions as well because it doesn't really say how to determine how big I should make /var or any partition other than only allocate space as needed, which isn't very helpful?

Well if you understood that /var will contain your applications, the space needed would be most likely more than 4Gb. You're asking for trouble messing with Oracle linux IMO. Start with a regular end-user oriented distribution that doesn't require you to manually configure partitions for every system resource.
 
What do you mean because according to that 4 GB is hardly minimum and what instructions as well because it doesn't really say how to determine how big I should make /var or any partition other than only allocate space as needed, which isn't very helpful?

A lot varies depending on what you're installing and how you're using the system. If you want to chase down what directory is consuming the most, you could use the "du" command.
ex. from a fresh CentOS 7 install - Server + GUI
Code:
[root@localhost /]# du --max-depth=1 -h /var
84M    /var/lib
2.6M    /var/log
0    /var/adm
850M    /var/cache
8.0K    /var/db
0    /var/empty
0    /var/games
0    /var/gopher
0    /var/local
0    /var/nis
0    /var/opt
0    /var/preserve
28K    /var/spool
4.0K    /var/tmp
0    /var/yp
0    /var/kerberos
0    /var/crash
0    /var/account
937M    /var
VS
another server that has been running for a while
Code:
4.0K    /var/games
362M    /var/lib
44K    /var/db
4.0K    /var/yp
7.4G    /var/tmp
96K    /var/run
4.0K    /var/nis
4.0K    /var/preserve
628K    /var/spool
16K    /var/lost+found
12K    /var/lock
15G    /var/www
8.0K    /var/empty
108M    /var/cache
4.0K    /var/local
7.2G    /var/log
4.0K    /var/opt
30G    /var

As you can see, I have some logs and yum caches that need cleaning up.

You just have to plan for how the system is going to grow. If you have no idea, and you have a generous amount to spare, there's no harm in overprovisoining, or just lumping it into the root partition.

Ideally you'd provision just what you need to get started and then expand volumes as needed with LVM, but there are other foundational issues to grasp before going that route.
 
the "needs #MB on the /var filesystem" reads like an out of space error. Do you have enough free space on the partition that contains /var? (could you post the output of "df -h" ?)

Here is the output of df -h:


[username@localhost ~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ol-root 620G 4.8G 615G 1% /
devtmpfs 12G 0 12G 0% /dev
tmpfs 12G 204K 12G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 12G 1.3G 11G 11% /run
tmpfs 12G 0 12G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/ol-var 4.0G 4.0G 16K 100% /var
/dev/sda1 494M 200M 294M 41% /boot
/dev/sda2 200M 0 200M 0% /boot/efi
/dev/mapper/ol-u01 520G 33M 520G 1% /u01
/dev/mapper/ol-u02 520G 33M 520G 1% /u02
/dev/mapper/ol-home 120G 89M 120G 1% /home
/dev/mapper/ol-tmp 4.0G 34M 4.0G 1% /tmp
tmpfs 2.4G 40K 2.4G 1% /run/user/1000
tmpfs 2.4G 0 2.4G 0% /run/user/986
tmpfs 2.4G 0 2.4G 0% /run/user/0
[username@localhost ~]$

Looks like I was right because the var partitions mount point is /var, so if I do > /var it will erase all the contents on that partition and free up space considering it is redirecting nothing into /var and therefore erasing it.
A lot varies depending on what you're installing and how you're using the system. If you want to chase down what directory is consuming the most, you could use the "du" command.
ex. from a fresh CentOS 7 install - Server + GUI
Code:
[root@localhost /]# du --max-depth=1 -h /var
84M    /var/lib
2.6M    /var/log
0    /var/adm
850M    /var/cache
8.0K    /var/db
0    /var/empty
0    /var/games
0    /var/gopher
0    /var/local
0    /var/nis
0    /var/opt
0    /var/preserve
28K    /var/spool
4.0K    /var/tmp
0    /var/yp
0    /var/kerberos
0    /var/crash
0    /var/account
937M    /var
VS
another server that has been running for a while
Code:
4.0K    /var/games
362M    /var/lib
44K    /var/db
4.0K    /var/yp
7.4G    /var/tmp
96K    /var/run
4.0K    /var/nis
4.0K    /var/preserve
628K    /var/spool
16K    /var/lost+found
12K    /var/lock
15G    /var/www
8.0K    /var/empty
108M    /var/cache
4.0K    /var/local
7.2G    /var/log
4.0K    /var/opt
30G    /var

As you can see, I have some logs and yum caches that need cleaning up.

You just have to plan for how the system is going to grow. If you have no idea, and you have a generous amount to spare, there's no harm in overprovisoining, or just lumping it into the root partition.

Ideally you'd provision just what you need to get started and then expand volumes as needed with LVM, but there are other foundational issues to grasp before going that route.

I don't have the output of the du command from any earlier than the following:


[username@localhost ~]$ sudo du --max-depth=1 -h /var
269M /var/lib
5.1M /var/log
0 /var/adm
3.7G /var/cache
12K /var/db
0 /var/empty
0 /var/games
0 /var/gopher
0 /var/local
0 /var/nis
0 /var/opt
0 /var/preserve
5.9M /var/spool
12M /var/tmp
0 /var/yp
8.0K /var/kerberos
0 /var/www
0 /var/target
0 /var/crash
20K /var/named
0 /var/account
0 /var/ftp
4.0G /var
[username@localhost ~]$

I don't know what you mean by plan either because there is nothing I've read or seen that explain how to determine how big you need any partition especially this /var partition to be. However, as I tried to say I believe I read something from the internet that said /var and /tmp couldn't be larger than 4 GB, but that either wasn't true or is no longer true and I take it that it was never true. Also, that no body really know how to determine what size these partitions need to be.

Swap is usually twice as much physical system memory (I prefer 2.5x the amount of physical system RAM), /boot is usually recommended to be 500 MB, /boot/efi 200 MB, /home as big as you need or have space left for, and / is what you don't want to run out of space, so make as big as possible. This only leaves /u01 and /u02 or whatever you prefer to name them and tell Oracle DB during the installation, which you also don't want to run out of space because this is where your database is stored if I'm not mistaken.

It looks like it's safe to purfge /var/cache ,but is it.
 
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Here is the output of df -h:


Looks like I was right because the var partitions mount point is /var, so if I do > /var it will erase all the contents on that partition and free up space considering it is redirecting nothing into /var and therefore erasing it.
I'm having a hard time understanding what you're planning to do. Could you clarify what command you're going to run against /var to free space safely?

scharfzhutze009 said:
I don't know what you mean by plan either because there is nothing I've read or seen that explain how to determine how big you need any partition especially this /var partition to be. However, as I tried to say I believe I read something from the internet that said /var and /tmp couldn't be larger than 4 GB, but that either wasn't true or is no longer true and I take it that it was never true. Also, that no body really know how to determine what size these partitions need to be.

Swap is usually twice as much physical system memory (I prefer 2.5x the amount of physical system RAM), /boot is usually recommended to be 500 MB, /boot/efi 200 MB, /home as big as you need or have space left for, and / is what you don't want to run out of space, so make as big as possible. This only leaves /u01 and /u02 or whatever you prefer to name them and tell Oracle DB during the installation, which you also don't want to run out of space because this is where your database is stored if I'm not mistaken.

/var and /tmp not being allowed to be bigger than 4GB is just generally false. Perhaps where you read that had additional context that made it apply in that scenario.

For planning sizes, at least for me, learning was trial & error and listening to linux users I worked with, and/or gleaned from forums and blogs.
If making a Windows parallel would help, it's like asking what's the minimum free space is needed for C:\Program Files\ and the answer becomes "It depends."



Breaking these directories off onto separate partitions nice, but is technically unnecessary. A big reason it is recommended is to help contain unchecked growth from impacting system services.

You could just have one root partition (ex. your /dev/mapper/ol-root 620G) and mount it at / and do not configure additional mounted partitions (other than the required ones like boot and swap). The filesystem will still have /home, /var, /etc, /usr, etc.. it'll just all reside on the 620GB partition together. Having a partition mounted at / just sets the storage used for the top of the drive. If you mount things inside of it (like a volume at /var) then you're saying that /var's contents will be stored in this other partition.

The whole system is just hanging directories off of the root ("/"). You can setup file systems on volumes/partitions and mount them at different locations for particular needs, like you're doing for /u01 and /u02, only in the case of /var it's to hold system data.


scharfshutze009 said:
It looks like it's safe to purfge /var/cache ,but is it.
You'll want to look inside /var/cache to find out what is using the space. Most likely it's your package manager cache and a "yum clean all" will reclaim a lot of space. You probably do not want to manually/forcefully delete the whole directory because running services may have cached data in there that they're using.
 
I'm having a hard time understanding what you're planning to do. Could you clarify what command you're going to run against /var to free space safely?



/var and /tmp not being allowed to be bigger than 4GB is just generally false. Perhaps where you read that had additional context that made it apply in that scenario.

For planning sizes, at least for me, learning was trial & error and listening to linux users I worked with, and/or gleaned from forums and blogs.
If making a Windows parallel would help, it's like asking what's the minimum free space is needed for C:\Program Files\ and the answer becomes "It depends."



Breaking these directories off onto separate partitions nice, but is technically unnecessary. A big reason it is recommended is to help contain unchecked growth from impacting system services.

You could just have one root partition (ex. your /dev/mapper/ol-root 620G) and mount it at / and do not configure additional mounted partitions (other than the required ones like boot and swap). The filesystem will still have /home, /var, /etc, /usr, etc.. it'll just all reside on the 620GB partition together. Having a partition mounted at / just sets the storage used for the top of the drive. If you mount things inside of it (like a volume at /var) then you're saying that /var's contents will be stored in this other partition.

The whole system is just hanging directories off of the root ("/"). You can setup file systems on volumes/partitions and mount them at different locations for particular needs, like you're doing for /u01 and /u02, only in the case of /var it's to hold system data.



You'll want to look inside /var/cache to find out what is using the space. Most likely it's your package manager cache and a "yum clean all" will reclaim a lot of space. You probably do not want to manually/forcefully delete the whole directory because running services may have cached data in there that they're using.

Thanks again this clarifies and makes me feel more confident about how I will safely clear up space.

I think your example of:

[QOUTE="If making a Windows parallel would help, it's like asking what's the minimum free space is needed for C:\Program Files\ and the answer becomes "It depends."[/QOUTE]

Was not that helpful though because I've never been taught to put that on a separate partition if that's what you mean and if not the mention or use of mount points, which are possible in Windows are seldom used by anyone I know and are usually only recommended by Microsoft if you run out of drive letters from what I remember. Microsoft either doesn't allow or makes creating seperate partitions kind of strange if possible in my opinion and if it is possible then it's not a procees I understand yet from a Microsoft perspective even if the process is probably very easy and intuitive like Apple products and compared to UNIX/LINUX alternatives.

I know that the reason to make /var a seperate partition is to keep / from getting full and crashing the system, but yea as you mentioned there may have been some other piece of information with that partitioning guide probably had additional context that explained how to determine partitioning sizes in UNIX/Linux for all partitons. Here it is below for you to see for your self:

http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten/Linux/FAQs/partition.html

I'll read through it again too.
 
Thanks again this clarifies and makes me feel more confident about how I will safely clear up space.

I think your example of:

[QOUTE="If making a Windows parallel would help, it's like asking what's the minimum free space is needed for C:\Program Files\ and the answer becomes "It depends."[/QOUTE]

Was not that helpful though because I've never been taught to put that on a separate partition if that's what you mean and if not the mention or use of mount points, which are possible in Windows are seldom used by anyone I know and are usually only recommended by Microsoft if you run out of drive letters from what I remember. Microsoft either doesn't allow or makes creating seperate partitions kind of strange if possible in my opinion and if it is possible then it's not a procees I understand yet from a Microsoft perspective even if the process is probably very easy and intuitive like Apple products and compared to UNIX/LINUX alternatives.

I know that the reason to make /var a seperate partition is to keep / from getting full and crashing the system, but yea as you mentioned there may have been some other piece of information with that partitioning guide probably had additional context that explained how to determine partitioning sizes in UNIX/Linux for all partitons. Here it is below for you to see for your self:

http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten/Linux/FAQs/partition.html

I'll read through it again too.

By the way I read though that guide I posted the link to and it was no where near as helpful as what you said. I guess I have the answer to my problem from you and just need to do it. However, I will post the contents of /var/cache if I have any doubts.
 
Thanks again this clarifies and makes me feel more confident about how I will safely clear up space.

I think your example of:

[QOUTE="If making a Windows parallel would help, it's like asking what's the minimum free space is needed for C:\Program Files\ and the answer becomes "It depends."[/QOUTE]

Was not that helpful though because I've never been taught to put that on a separate partition if that's what you mean and if not the mention or use of mount points, which are possible in Windows are seldom used by anyone I know and are usually only recommended by Microsoft if you run out of drive letters from what I remember. Microsoft either doesn't allow or makes creating seperate partitions kind of strange if possible in my opinion and if it is possible then it's not a procees I understand yet from a Microsoft perspective even if the process is probably very easy and intuitive like Apple products and compared to UNIX/LINUX alternatives.

I know that the reason to make /var a seperate partition is to keep / from getting full and crashing the system, but yea as you mentioned there may have been some other piece of information with that partitioning guide probably had additional context that explained how to determine partitioning sizes in UNIX/Linux for all partitons. Here it is below for you to see for your self:

http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten/Linux/FAQs/partition.html

I'll read through it again too.

I get what the author is trying to communicate, but they've made a lot of subjective decisions. Overall I think it'd be hard to maintain it with the way they've carved up their drive so much using standard partitions. Pushing partitions around so you could expand one in particular would be an involved process for sure.

Everything is a learning opportunity though. The next time you setup a box, it'll be even better. :)
 
I'm having a hard time understanding what you're planning to do. Could you clarify what command you're going to run against /var to free space safely?



/var and /tmp not being allowed to be bigger than 4GB is just generally false. Perhaps where you read that had additional context that made it apply in that scenario.

For planning sizes, at least for me, learning was trial & error and listening to linux users I worked with, and/or gleaned from forums and blogs.
If making a Windows parallel would help, it's like asking what's the minimum free space is needed for C:\Program Files\ and the answer becomes "It depends."



Breaking these directories off onto separate partitions nice, but is technically unnecessary. A big reason it is recommended is to help contain unchecked growth from impacting system services.

You could just have one root partition (ex. your /dev/mapper/ol-root 620G) and mount it at / and do not configure additional mounted partitions (other than the required ones like boot and swap). The filesystem will still have /home, /var, /etc, /usr, etc.. it'll just all reside on the 620GB partition together. Having a partition mounted at / just sets the storage used for the top of the drive. If you mount things inside of it (like a volume at /var) then you're saying that /var's contents will be stored in this other partition.

The whole system is just hanging directories off of the root ("/"). You can setup file systems on volumes/partitions and mount them at different locations for particular needs, like you're doing for /u01 and /u02, only in the case of /var it's to hold system data.



You'll want to look inside /var/cache to find out what is using the space. Most likely it's your package manager cache and a "yum clean all" will reclaim a lot of space. You probably do not want to manually/forcefully delete the whole directory because running services may have cached data in there that they're using.

Also, another thing is I don't know what you mean by how I plan to clear it because I meant purge by doing > /var/cache, but I can't do that because there may be other files in the directory on that partition and at that mount point or whatever. Therefore, I need to probably do what you said and do a "yum clean all" instead.
 
Also, another thing is I don't know what you mean by how I plan to clear it because I meant purge by doing > /var/cache, but I can't do that because there may be other files in the directory on that partition and at that mount point or whatever. Therefore, I need to probably do what you said and do a "yum clean all" instead.

I don't know what you meant by this segment in your previous post
so if I do > /var it will erase all the contents on that partition and free up space
as in what command you would specifically run. However, I was hoping you'd clarify. It's not all that important though.. I was just curious on the details of what action you'd take.

Certainly try to clear the cache with "yum clean all" first. :)
 
I don't know what you meant by this segment in your previous post as in what command you would specifically run. However, I was hoping you'd clarify. It's not all that important though.. I was just curious on the details of what action you'd take.

Certainly try to clear the cache with "yum clean all" first. :)

I tried "yum clean all" , but it didn't help and I got the following output from both "yum clean all" and du command following it:


[username@localhost ~]$ yum clean all
Loaded plugins: langpacks, ulninfo
Could not set cachedir: [Errno 28] No space left on device: '/var/tmp/yum-username-HZ0TbS'
Cleaning repos: ol7_UEKR3 ol7_latest
Cleaning up everything
[username@localhost ~]$ sudo du --max-depth=1 -h /var
269M /var/lib
5.1M /var/log
0 /var/adm
3.7G /var/cache
12K /var/db
0 /var/empty
0 /var/games
0 /var/gopher
0 /var/local
0 /var/nis
0 /var/opt
0 /var/preserve
5.9M /var/spool
12M /var/tmp
0 /var/yp
8.0K /var/kerberos
0 /var/www
0 /var/target
0 /var/crash
20K /var/named
0 /var/account
0 /var/ftp
4.0G /var
[username@localhost ~]$

It looks like I will have to redo my system after, but I still don't know how big I should make /var if I do?
 
The basic issue here is that the tutorial you have followed has informed you to use partition sizes that are too small to be practically useful. Rather than mucking around with yum purge and yum clean, I think it's perfectly obvious that what needs to happen is the OS needs reinstalling with larger partition sizes this time around.
 
It looks like I will have to redo my system after, but I still don't know how big I should make /var if I do?
Essentially, I agree with BulletDust. At this point, repartitioning at install would be the easiest solution to get to where you can move forward.

What all did you have planned for this server? Is it just for learning Oracle products, or do you have around 1.5 TB worth of data you were planning to store in it?
Personally, I'd recommend not even making a distinct partition for /var and roll it into your ~620 GB root partition. However, that's based on the assumption that you're just wanting to focus on learning Oracle Database software, and it's not any type of real "production" level system.

Can you describe your project in more detail and outline what type of data you're wanting to serve with this machine?
 
Was not that helpful though because I've never been taught to ...

THIS here is exactly the reason why I hate school systems. They produce people with diplomas and book knowledge but won't necessarily provide any meaningful or practical understanding on the subjects being taught.

When we're recruiting people, most of the time the most skillful workers are those who didn't learn through school but taught themselves. If you ever want to become a great Dba or sysadmin, you need to take your system to the limit, break it. Build it from scratch again, break it again and repeat until you know by gut what you should be doing.

Somewhere along the process you'll start to understand why stuff breaks, how to fix it and how to avoid the situation in the future.
 
Yeah. The cause of your issue is that /var is full. With only 4GB allocated to it, I'm not really sure what you could free up easily.

Unfortunately /var contains a lot of system and data files so you can't really do random purging of directories. /var also houses /var/log which is where your log files will be found and will grow over time.

Easiest solution may be to re-install and be more generous with some of the space allocation. Allocating 20GB or so to /var will keep the system satisfied for a while. You could also just not specify a separate partition for /var and let it ride on the generous 615GB root partition.

Next idea, that I think may be a large undertaking for you. You could work through using LVM to expand /dev/mapper/ol-var.
You'll want to do some reading and practicing on a VM before trying it on the live system. Also, you'll need some free space in your volume group to add to it, so if everything is allocated then you could be looking at having to shrink a volume in order to reallocate it to /dev/mapper/ol-var. It's achievable, and a good learning exercise. However, it's a good source of frustration along the way until you get the tools and concepts.

Personally, I'd just go with a re-install this early on in the build.

Thanks, but I made it a separate partition for the same reason I used to make it one and to keep / from getting full and crashing or does this no longer apply. Resizing might help because I wouldn't have to reinstall, but it's not like it matters if I do anyway because I don't have any important files or configurations on here anyway and this is just a test system done the old fashioned way because VM and Virtual Box are being a pain too considering I had even more login issue with it because no matter how carefully or well I remembered my password I couldn't get it right to login and honestly I almost always use the same password pattern for standard and root account on a test system or VM. Therefore, I usually don't find a need to write down my password(s).
 
Essentially, I agree with BulletDust. At this point, repartitioning at install would be the easiest solution to get to where you can move forward.

What all did you have planned for this server? Is it just for learning Oracle products, or do you have around 1.5 TB worth of data you were planning to store in it?
Personally, I'd recommend not even making a distinct partition for /var and roll it into your ~620 GB root partition. However, that's based on the assumption that you're just wanting to focus on learning Oracle Database software, and it's not any type of real "production" level system.

Can you describe your project in more detail and outline what type of data you're wanting to serve with this machine?

It's not a production server at all and just a test system, but this is going to cause frustration because I have no idea how you know or if 20 GB will be enough for the /var. I also don't want /var to fill up / and cause it to crash either, so how can I still avoid that from happening? The assumption is right that I do pretty much just want to learn or relearn Oracle DB, but i kinda want to see how much I can make an Oracle DB server do because I only have 1 test server and one sorta production server that I'm to afraid or possibly prohibited from going live with because i don't have a business license yet and considering if I don't go about it the right way I could cause a communication disruption just like I can if I connect my Cisco Lab equipment to the internet.
 
THIS here is exactly the reason why I hate school systems. They produce people with diplomas and book knowledge but won't necessarily provide any meaningful or practical understanding on the subjects being taught.

When we're recruiting people, most of the time the most skillful workers are those who didn't learn through school but taught themselves. If you ever want to become a great Dba or sysadmin, you need to take your system to the limit, break it. Build it from scratch again, break it again and repeat until you know by gut what you should be doing.

Somewhere along the process you'll start to understand why stuff breaks, how to fix it and how to avoid the situation in the future.

Exactly, because the University I go to will not let any business or student easily take or gain control of the curriculum and restricts students to and insane 1 hour and 15 min class time with no separate lab or lecture day. Makes them take short answer tests making it more likely that they'll get the answer wrong. Also, has no real hands on class with real server hardware and just expects them to setup a server on a desktop computer with a drive carrier and mobile rack where you can't take the drive home because it belongs to the school and so does the drive carrier for the mobile rack unlike the Community Technical College I got my Associates from.

Basically, I'm not learning crap from this University other than the faculty and staff are a bunch of controlling pricks and prisses who do everything they can to keep you from doing what you need to do and over charge you to get an education at the school. When I lived in the dorms some butt head or priss would set off the darn fire alarm every time I was in the middle of doing something for some reason and sometimes it was a false alarm or prank for whatever reason.

The CIS-Networking Department head for UNIX/LInux doesn't even have a Linux Server Distro Certification and has the nerve to say students come from the Community College I came from to this school and say they can't do it or if they have a degree in Electrical Engineering they can't do it here at this school. No crap really though because this stupid school expects you to take a step backward and take 30 credit hours of gen eds instead of just letting you just right into your major specifics, take a minor, and get at least a solid C in your major specifics by passing a Skill Final covering all the material done in Lab throughout the semester in 2 hours with given or self made command references that have to be hand written, so you'll be less likely to be able to read them considering neither one of the two instructors who can teach it can agree if you provide your own or if they should give them to you and then having one of them not let the other teach either of the two classes you need to pass.

Finally, as I mentioned you have to take a written final with short answer questions that your very likely to get wrong because they might not be able to read or understand and all the other tests throughout the semester could be the same depending on, which instructor teaches the two classes.Then they have the insane idea for you to retake CCNA because they don't think your CCNA skills are adequate with the same bull crap standards and don't care if you pass or how it will effect your GPA.

Oh and you have to do the lab on the schools equipment even though it doesn't count toward you grade unless you doing discovery labs for the one instructor because the other one doesn't do them, but I believe he grades normal labs and not discovery labs designed to confuse you I mean prepare you for the skill final. Also, the one who expect you to do discovery labs and hand write command references doesn't usually come prepared with their own powerpoints and expect you to write everything down on the board that they say before they erase it, sometimes takes control of all the computers in the classroom like a dictator and won't let you complete your outline, and sometimes doesn't write anything on the board, like CIsco is a giant secret or that the material is top secret. Another, thing the school doesn't even offer to sell the actual Cisco Lab manual to you or tell you that you can get them off amazon, but instead makes you wait 1 or two weeks before the class starts or the day before to get your hands on their modified digital copies of the lab manuals making it even harder for you to get experience with the material.

If you don't work in the field or already have your Cisco Certifications or own your own compatible equipment good luck preparing and passing the classes because VIRL is hard to use, GNS can't emulate switches without a Cisco IOU that you have to get from CIsco, and packet tracer can't do most CCNP level functionality to prepare for the skill final.

As far as the written final you should have no problem as long as you take good notes and the instructor isn't being a controlling you know what, but unless you pass the written and skill with a 70% or better for each one you'll definitely fail the class and there's no curving what so ever and only one make up for the Skill if you get a 50% or better on it. No config files can be used on the skill final either and it all has to be from scratch except for the instructions and command references you either provide hand written yourself or that are provided for you. The same goes for all other CIS-Networking courses except Server hardware and hardware support if not others.
 
THIS here is exactly the reason why I hate school systems. They produce people with diplomas and book knowledge but won't necessarily provide any meaningful or practical understanding on the subjects being taught.

When we're recruiting people, most of the time the most skillful workers are those who didn't learn through school but taught themselves. If you ever want to become a great Dba or sysadmin, you need to take your system to the limit, break it. Build it from scratch again, break it again and repeat until you know by gut what you should be doing.

Somewhere along the process you'll start to understand why stuff breaks, how to fix it and how to avoid the situation in the future.

Exactly, because the University I go to will not let any business or student easily take or gain control of the curriculum and restricts students to and insane 1 hour and 15 min class time with no separate lab or lecture day. Makes them take short answer tests making it more likely that they'll get the answer wrong. Also, has no real hands on class with real server hardware and just expects them to setup a server on a desktop computer with a drive carrier and mobile rack where you can't take the drive home because it belongs to the school and so does the drive carrier for the mobile rack unlike the Community Technical College I got my Associates from.

Basically, I'm not learning crap from this University other than the faculty and staff are a bunch of controlling pricks and prisses who do everything they can to keep you from doing what you need to do and over charge you to get an education at the school. When I lived in the dorms some butt head or priss would set off the darn fire alarm every time I was in the middle of doing something for some reason and sometimes it was a false alarm or prank for whatever reason.

The CIS-Networking Department head for UNIX/LInux doesn't even have a Linux Server Distro Certification and has the nerve to say students come from the Community College I came from to this school and say they can't do it or if they have a degree in Electrical Engineering they can't do it here at this school. No crap really though because this stupid school expects you to take a step backward and take 30 credit hours of gen eds instead of just letting you just right into your major specifics, take a minor, and get at least a solid C in your major specifics by passing a Skill Final covering all the material done in Lab throughout the semester in 2 hours with given or self made command references that have to be hand written, so you'll be less likely to be able to read them considering neither one of the two instructors who can teach it can agree if you provide your own or if they should give them to you and then having one of them not let the other teach either of the two classes you need to pass.

Finally, as I mentioned you have to take a written final with short answer questions that your very likely to get wrong because they might not be able to read or understand and all the other tests throughout the semester could be the same depending on, which instructor teaches the two classes.Then they have the insane idea for you to retake CCNA because they don't think your CCNA skills are adequate with the same bull crap standards and don't care if you pass or how it will effect your GPA.

Oh and you have to do the lab on the schools equipment even though it doesn't count toward you grade unless you doing discovery labs for the one instructor because the other one doesn't do them, but I believe he grades normal labs and not discovery labs designed to confuse you I mean prepare you for the skill final. Also, the one who expect you to do discovery labs and hand write command references doesn't usually come prepared with their own powerpoints and expect you to write everything down on the board that they say before they erase it, sometimes takes control of all the computers in the classroom like a dictator and won't let you complete your outline, and sometimes doesn't write anything on the board, like CIsco is a giant secret or that the material is top secret. Another, thing the school doesn't even offer to sell the actual Cisco Lab manual to you or tell you that you can get them off amazon, but instead makes you wait 1 or two weeks before the class starts or the day before to get your hands on their modified digital copies of the lab manuals making it even harder for you to get experience with the material.

If you don't work in the field or already have your Cisco Certifications or own your own compatible equipment good luck preparing and passing the classes because VIRL is hard to use, GNS can't emulate switches without a Cisco IOU that you have to get from CIsco, and packet tracer can't do most CCNP level functionality to prepare for the skill final.

As far as the written final you should have no problem as long as you take good notes and the instructor isn't being a controlling you know what, but unless you pass the written and skill with a 70% or better for each one you'll definitely fail the class and there's no curving what so ever and only one make up for the Skill if you get a 50% or better on it. No config files can be used on the skill final either and it all has to be from scratch except for the instructions and command references you either provide hand written yourself or that are provided for you. The same goes for all other CIS-Networking courses except Server hardware and hardware support if not others.

Good luck getting Cisco support if your not a Cisco partner or business or do have a product warranty either except if your purchasing VIRL I think and have a valid Cisco id because you won't be able to get support or purchase IOS updates with it either.

VIRL is CIsco's weird alternative to Jeremy Grossmans GNS too because it makes no sense to me as to how to use it or how it works, which instead of making a similar product to GNS that officially support by them Cisco made VIRL. However, they support GNS anyway though because CIsco supplies the IOU (IOS on UNIX) for GNS, so whatever.

Essentially, I agree with BulletDust. At this point, repartitioning at install would be the easiest solution to get to where you can move forward.

What all did you have planned for this server? Is it just for learning Oracle products, or do you have around 1.5 TB worth of data you were planning to store in it?
Personally, I'd recommend not even making a distinct partition for /var and roll it into your ~620 GB root partition. However, that's based on the assumption that you're just wanting to focus on learning Oracle Database software, and it's not any type of real "production" level system.

Can you describe your project in more detail and outline what type of data you're wanting to serve with this machine?
Thanks, but I made it a separate partition for the same reason I used to make it one and to keep / from getting full and crashing or does this no longer apply. Resizing might help because I wouldn't have to reinstall, but it's not like it matters if I do anyway because I don't have any important files or configurations on here anyway and this is just a test system done the old fashioned way because VM and Virtual Box are being a pain too considering I had even more login issue with it because no matter how carefully or well I remembered my password I couldn't get it right to login and honestly I almost always use the same password pattern for standard and root account on a test system or VM. Therefore, I usually don't find a need to write down my password(s).
 
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Essentially, I agree with BulletDust. At this point, repartitioning at install would be the easiest solution to get to where you can move forward.

What all did you have planned for this server? Is it just for learning Oracle products, or do you have around 1.5 TB worth of data you were planning to store in it?
Personally, I'd recommend not even making a distinct partition for /var and roll it into your ~620 GB root partition. However, that's based on the assumption that you're just wanting to focus on learning Oracle Database software, and it's not any type of real "production" level system.

Can you describe your project in more detail and outline what type of data you're wanting to serve with this machine?

Looks like I'm reinstalling because everytime I try to look up how to resize partitions in a second window for Redhat using Firefox it locks up and then I have to kill or stop the process either using ps -ef to find the process and process id or using system monitor. I don't think google chrome would help either even if it could be installed either.
 
Essentially, I agree with BulletDust. At this point, repartitioning at install would be the easiest solution to get to where you can move forward.

What all did you have planned for this server? Is it just for learning Oracle products, or do you have around 1.5 TB worth of data you were planning to store in it?
Personally, I'd recommend not even making a distinct partition for /var and roll it into your ~620 GB root partition. However, that's based on the assumption that you're just wanting to focus on learning Oracle Database software, and it's not any type of real "production" level system.

Can you describe your project in more detail and outline what type of data you're wanting to serve with this machine?

Looks like I'm reinstalling because everytime I try to look up how to resize partitions in a second window for Redhat using Firefox it locks up and then I have to kill or stop the process either using ps -ef to find the process and process id or using system monitor. I don't think google chrome would help either even if it could be installed either.

I hereby dub thee Oracle Linux the Unusable Linux because Firefox locks up everytime I try to open a send window or more and do a web search.
 
It's not a production server at all and just a test system, but this is going to cause frustration because I have no idea how you know or if 20 GB will be enough for the /var. I also don't want /var to fill up / and cause it to crash either, so how can I still avoid that from happening? The assumption is right that I do pretty much just want to learn or relearn Oracle DB, but i kinda want to see how much I can make an Oracle DB server do because I only have 1 test server and one sorta production server that I'm to afraid or possibly prohibited from going live with because i don't have a business license yet and considering if I don't go about it the right way I could cause a communication disruption just like I can if I connect my Cisco Lab equipment to the internet.
Since you're just using it for learning and the actual data sizes and software specifics are a bit nebulous at this stage, I think you would be fine with dividing up storage fairly generously. You have around ~1.7TB of storage in this box, so you could do something like the following and be at a state with lots of room to grow your datasets and software into.
Code:
/     500G
/home 120G
/var  100G
/tmp  20G
/u01  520G
/u02  520G
 
find out what is taking up all the space in /var/cache and delete one of the bigger files, then run the yum clean all.

# cd /var/cache
# du -ak | sort -n | tail -20

guessing you will bunch of big dirs/files in /var/cache/yum, rm one of the bigger packages in there, which will free up enough space so that you can work on the system, then:

# yum clean all

with a modern machine / disk sizes I don't see a reason to go less then 8G for /var, and if its going to be something with heavy logging like a web server dumping lots of logs in to /var/log/httpd i would go with more.

in your case if you don't want to reinstall you might just add another lvm for /var/cache
 
Since you're just using it for learning and the actual data sizes and software specifics are a bit nebulous at this stage, I think you would be fine with dividing up storage fairly generously. You have around ~1.7TB of storage in this box, so you could do something like the following and be at a state with lots of room to grow your datasets and software into.
Code:
/     500G
/home 120G
/var  100G
/tmp  20G
/u01  520G
/u02  520G

Exactly, I should be able to take the suggested 20 GB from / and give it to /var by resizing them both, but shrinking / first and expanding /var second.
 
find out what is taking up all the space in /var/cache and delete one of the bigger files, then run the yum clean all.

# cd /var/cache
# du -ak | sort -n | tail -20

guessing you will bunch of big dirs/files in /var/cache/yum, rm one of the bigger packages in there, which will free up enough space so that you can work on the system, then:

# yum clean all

with a modern machine / disk sizes I don't see a reason to go less then 8G for /var, and if its going to be something with heavy logging like a web server dumping lots of logs in to /var/log/httpd i would go with more.

in your case if you don't want to reinstall you might just add another lvm for /var/cache

Thanks you and Frobozz seem to agree with me. After all I need experience with resizing and not reinstalling because if this where a live or critical system then the last thing I would want to do is reinstall. However, firefox is giving me nothing but trouble when I try to look up Redhat's site on how to do it. Therefore, I'm putting this project on hold until I can resolve it or afford Oracle support to get this OS to do what I want if necessary.
 
Thanks you and Frobozz seem to agree with me. After all I need experience with resizing and not reinstalling because if this where a live or critical system then the last thing I would want to do is reinstall. However, firefox is giving me nothing but trouble when I try to look up Redhat's site on how to do it. Therefore, I'm putting this project on hold until I can resolve it or afford Oracle support to get this OS to do what I want if necessary.

Nevermind apparently you can't resize and if you can it looks like you just delete it and recreate it according to the following:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/1190213
 
Nevermind apparently you can't resize and if you can it looks like you just delete it and recreate it according to the following:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/1190213

Just to restate my thoughts - IMO the fastest way for you (with your current skill set) to get back to a working system is to just wipe and start over, and being a bit more liberal with some of the space allocations. And that's not a knock.. everything is new to us at some point.

That being said, it never hurts to learn. It just matters if you're up for dealing with it at this particular moment or not.
based on your df output, (knowingly or not) you're using LVM to manage your volumes. This gives you flexibility to resize volumes, but adds a layer of complexity compared to standard partitions administered with just fdisk and mkfs. It also requires you to use a handful of utilities that you may not be familiar with. Check out the man pages for pvdisplay, vgdisplay, and lvdisplay. Try to understand the output for each utility. They also have a suite of related commands to create, resize, and delete physical volumes, volume groups, and logical volumes.

Essentially you have a "physical volume" (your actual drive like sda or confusingly a partition) added to a "volume group". That volume group can contain "logical volumes" and that's what those /dev/mapper/ol-home items are.
So you're going to look at the process to shrink a filesystem, and then shrink a logical volume. That space becomes free to the volume group and can be allocated to ol-var volume. You'll do that and then you'll expand the filesystem.
*note: you have to unmount filesystems to shrink them. that makes shrinking root to be particularly tricky and usually requires booting into a live usb/dvd/cd environment.

Could you do a little searching on Google for phrases like "how to shrink volume with lvm" and "how to expand volume with lvm"? You'll get a ton of results with examples for what you'd need to do. However, you'll probably have the best time if you practice on a Virtual Machine first. You can then snapshot and rollback to save time as you practice a few times.
 
The thing that impresses me about the OP is that he never stops trying, which is more than I can say for the supposed gamers here that simply sook that somethings too hard.

The thing is Scharfshutze009, you always seem to push too far past that point where you're best to just cut you're losses and start over! I think the VM idea and snapshots is the way to go, stuff something up? Just restore the snapshot.
 
The thing that impresses me about the OP is that he never stops trying, which is more than I can say for the supposed gamers here that simply sook that somethings too hard.

The thing is Scharfshutze009, you always seem to push too far past that point where you're best to just cut you're losses and start over! I think the VM idea and snapshots is the way to go, stuff something up? Just restore the snapshot.

He's probably just trolling us and laughing under his beard.
 
THIS here is exactly the reason why I hate school systems. They produce people with diplomas and book knowledge but won't necessarily provide any meaningful or practical understanding on the subjects being taught.

When we're recruiting people, most of the time the most skillful workers are those who didn't learn through school but taught themselves. If you ever want to become a great Dba or sysadmin, you need to take your system to the limit, break it. Build it from scratch again, break it again and repeat until you know by gut what you should be doing.

Somewhere along the process you'll start to understand why stuff breaks, how to fix it and how to avoid the situation in the future.
I do this all the time at home & it helps me fix innumerable problems at work. Trying new filesystems & new fixes for problems like above lets me offer new solutions at the office as well.
 
Serious question & not to derail the thread -- Assuming you aren't building a box for a specific application that writes a ton of data to /var (and yes I have boxes that DO do this...) - does anyone make /var a mountpoint anymore?

I usually just do /boot and / and do them on LVM or btrfs and those have so much flexibility you really don't run into an issue like this.

Another possibility for OP of course is to add a new disk/partition, boot into a live linux cd and make /var a mountpoint after moving everything there. I had to do this the other day when / ran out of inodes due to writing to /var. Ended up with 200k+ files in /var. Gave it it's own 16G disk & I was set after I copied everything over with rsync & rebooted.
 
I still make /var separate at home and work. It still feels like the most likely thing to grow out of control when things go wrong. To many logs, logs not getting rotated correctly, core files, been burned to many times. Full /var is bad, but full / is worse, and in my experience people don't tend to look at space usage until they start seeing problems.
 
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