How much space for /var

How much space for /var? I have installed EOS in January and created a dedicated /var partition of 16G. I now realise that it is not enough. If you have a separate partition for this, how big is it? Any experiences/recommendations?

Thank you, Nikos

On Arch-based distros, I recommend not creating a separate /var because pacman stores permament data there.

As for size, it depends how aggressively you prune the package cache and what else you store there.

I would say at least 30GB to be safe. More if you are keeping VMs, containers or containerized applications there.

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Is it safe to to move /var in my / partition? My root is a separate partition, with 104G free space currently.

As long as you do it correctly preserving all the attributes it should be safe.

Just don’t update your system while you are copying the files.

The section on file system cloning in this wiki article has a good set of rsync options to use for that kind of operation.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Rsync#File_system_cloning

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Something like :

# as root
cd /
mkdir varclone
rsync -qaHAXSx /var/ /varclone/
sudo umount /var
sudo mv /varclone /var

Then remove the line that mounts /var from /etc/fstab and try to re-boot. If all goes well, then remove the old /var :

sudo rm -R /var

This might be tough to do while it is in use. You will have to try and see.

That will delete the new /var. You shouldn’t need to do this. The old var is in it’s partition still. You can just do as you will with that partition. No need to delete the files.

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How about

umount -f /var (force umount)

or

umount -l /var (lazy umount)

see : https://serverfault.com/a/1007187

Personally, I would do that part while booted off the ISO. You don’t want to cause applications to crash that depend on /var/cache or some other part of /var

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Right, then I correct myself with your assistance :-). I meant to remove tha (old) partition once not needed.

Operation succesful. Thank you so much @dalto!

It went like :

  • Boot via Endeavouros_Cassini_neo_22_12.iso
  • Identify the / partition (find in /etc/fstab for example)
  • Decrypt the encrypted / partition via sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/the-root-nvm-partition cryptroot
  • Identify the device mapper via ls -la /dev/mapper, if I remember correctly
  • Mount it via sudo mkdir /mnt/eosroot && sudo mount /dev/dm-0 /mnt/eosroot
  • Get into it cd /mnt/eosroot and rename var to varold and finally varclone to var
  • I commented out the corresponding var lines in /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab
  • Reboot and all is fine :slight_smile:
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