[YLUG] can't free up enough space to upgrade Ubuntu

[David Morris]

Your problem is that Ubuntu wants 2002M free space on the *root* (/)
partition (/dev/sda2)
The majority of your space (as well as most of the things you are deleting
to free it up) are on the /home partition (/dev/sda4).

On 4 November 2012 22:47, nigel white <xm2 at btinternet.com> wrote:

> df -h gets (but I don't understand what this means)
> Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda2       9.3G  7.3G  1.6G  83% /
> <<<---------------- THIS IS THE LINE THAT MATTERS
> udev            494M  4.0K  494M   1% /dev
> tmpfs           201M  1.2M  200M   1% /run
> none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
> none            501M  196K  501M   1% /run/shm
> /dev/sda4        40G  4.1G   34G  11% /home
>
>
Can you post the output of

sudo du -sh /* 2>/dev/null

(this may take some time)
It may be that there is some rubbish in /tmp or /var that you can dump.
If there isn't, the simplest solution to your *stated* problem would be to
use a partitioning
tool to resize the root partition, using some of that spare space in /home.
Have never had to do
this, but I suspect that it has to be done while the partition is not
mounted, so it may be
somewhat involved. If you want to go this route, there's probably a good
guide on the internet somewhere.

However, t has been my experience that upgrading, particularly Ubuntu
systems, is as likely to
make a system more unstable as it is to improve it.
Are you particularly attached to what is on your root partition? Looking at
the output of df,
it would seem that you already have a separate /home partition (which is
where all your documents, photos etc
should be). Given this, you ought to be able to blow away your existing
installation and replace with a fresh install
without losing any of your data.

If you post the output of the above command, we'll see about making the
upgrade work. But it's worth keeping
in mind that your partition layout ought to make a 'fresh' install
relatively painless.

HTH,

D
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