From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Dec 14 16:58:19 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD42F106564A for ; Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:58:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mail@ozzmosis.com) Received: from smtp.mel.people.net.au (smtp.mel.people.net.au [218.214.17.98]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 112088FC1D for ; Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:58:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mail@ozzmosis.com) Received: (qmail 21908 invoked from network); 14 Dec 2008 16:58:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO blizzard.dnsalias.org) (218.215.144.4) by smtp.mel.people.net.au with SMTP; 14 Dec 2008 16:58:15 -0000 Received: by blizzard.dnsalias.org (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 58B07170D0; Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:58:16 +1100 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:58:16 +1100 From: andrew clarke To: FuLLBLaSTstorm Message-ID: <20081214165816.GA6979@ozzmosis.com> References: <6c51dbb10812140628t3531c703r85f691d228dfd8e3@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <6c51dbb10812140628t3531c703r85f691d228dfd8e3@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd-update killed my /var X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:58:19 -0000 On Sun 2008-12-14 19:28:16 UTC+0500, FuLLBLaSTstorm (fullblaststorm@gmail.com) wrote: > Recently I've run freebsd-update on my desktop machine, but it failed > saying that it cannot save its files anymore to /var because the > filesystem is full. If you are short on disk space then from what I can tell it seems to be harmless to erase everything under /var/db/freebsd-update before you run "freebsd-update -r x.x-RELEASE upgrade". The catch is that you lose the ability to use the "freebsd-update rollback" command. After all, /var/db/freebsd-update/ presumably begins life as an empty folder after an initial install of FreeBSD. That is my experience, anyway. I may be wrong! I assume the way "rollback" works is that if you use freebsd-upgrade to upgrade from 6.2-REL to 6.3-REL, then again to 6.4-REL, the theory is that you can reverse the upgrades all the way back to 6.2-REL again. Whether you'd actually want to do that... I'm not sure. It seems to me that if you upgraded to 6.4-REL, then you'd probably only ever want to rollback as far back as 6.3-REL. I guess the ability to rollback multiple releases is provided mostly because it's possible, and disk space is cheap. I suppose you could always create a symlink: mv /var/db/freebsd-update /var/db/freebsd-update.old ln -s /disk/with/lots/of/space/freebsd-update /var/db/freebsd-update