Free space on a Unix based OS
Bible John
free space in order to run properly. Is this true and if so why? Howcome
with non Unix oses I can have less free space available and they still work
properly?
My ibook has a 30GB drive, and I am down to 5.5GB free. I do not plan to go
below 3GB's, but some tell me not to go below 5GB's.
Is a Unix os really that much better than a DOS os?
Strange why Microsoft has chosen not to convert their OS to Unix based, as
Apple has done.
John
--
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Auric__
> I am running Mac OSX Tiger. I am told that Unix oses need at least 2
> GB's of free space in order to run properly. Is this true and if so
> why? Howcome with non Unix oses I can have less free space available
> and they still work properly?
I had Red Hat Linux 7.something installed and running just fine on a 486
with a ~500MB drive (and another ~100MB drive for swap) a few years ago.
No X-Windows, but that's the trade-off. I'm also currently running
Slackware Linux 10.1 (last year's version) on a ~5GB partition (plus a
1/2-GB swap). Again, no problems, and I've only got about 1.5GB free.
Any system that needs gigs of free space might be using some insanely-
huge swapfile - but that's just a guess.
> My ibook has a 30GB drive, and I am down to 5.5GB free. I do not plan
> to go below 3GB's, but some tell me not to go below 5GB's.
If I were running OSX I could probably respond to this. (My Macs don't
run anything newer than 8.5 without major hackery, and they haven't even
been booted up in nearly a year.)
> Is a Unix os really that much better than a DOS os?
Matter of opinion, really. DOS (and Win9x) inherits things from as far
back as CP/M (mid-70's), but *nix systems inherit things as old as Unix
(late 60's).
> Strange why Microsoft has chosen not to convert their OS to Unix
> based, as Apple has done.
Not strange at all. They no longer own Xenix - they traded it to the
Santa Cruz Operation for 25% ownership in SCO - so their choices would be
either 1) create a new one or 2) use an existing one. 1 isn't really
feasible on the level they'd need (Apple didn't write OSX from scratch,
either - Darwin came from one of the *BSD distros) and 2 has it's own
problems - if they use a closed-source version they'd have to license or
buy it from someone else, and they just wouldn't use an open-source
version.
Another reason involves the whole SCO thing. (For more info, check out
groklaw.com.) If by some evil miracle SCO's claims to Unix get proven
(affirmed, whatever), as unlikely as that is, then SCO and *only* SCO
could *in theory* own pretty much anything even remotely resembling Unix
(well, maybe not, but it seems to be what Darl McBride wants), and thus
cause flaming death to any company selling a *nix system.
Also, you have to remember that Windows is MS's flagship product - almost
everything they do revolves around Windows in some way - so it'd be a Bad
Thing (for them) to stop doing Windows. (Combining Windows with *nix
would just give you a Windows + *nix system, easily accomplished with
currently-available tools like Cygwin, GnuWin32, MinGw, UWin, etc.)
--
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Eli Criffield
and servers that had less then 2Gs total, let alone free. Theres
nothing to needing 2Gs free.
There is a small Disk IO performance hit when it gets over 90% full but
you probably won't notice it anyway.
Eli
Bill Marcum
On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:56:10 -0700, Bible John
<johnw...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am running Mac OSX Tiger. I am told that Unix oses need at least 2 GB's of
> free space in order to run properly. Is this true and if so why? Howcome
> with non Unix oses I can have less free space available and they still work
> properly?
>
space, but in most *ix filesystems, about 5 percent of the space is
reserved for the root user. This percentage can be modified by the
tunefs command.
--
Maintainer's Motto:
If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
Jan van den Broek
>I am running Mac OSX Tiger. I am told that Unix oses need at least 2 GB's of
>free space in order to run properly. Is this true and if so why?
It all depends on your needs. Ten years ago I had thirty users on a
Sperry S5090 with 480 MB diskspace (16 MB memory), main application
was written for a Progress Database (version 4). Those figures wouldn't
be realistic nowadays, but the machine was running an Unix OS.
--
Rozen verwelken, \--------------------\
Schepen vergaan. \ Jan van den Broek \
Een koe moet je melken, \ balg...@xs4all.nl \
Een paard moet je slaan. \--------------------\
Pascal Bourguignon
> I am running Mac OSX Tiger. I am told that Unix oses need at least 2 GB's of
> free space in order to run properly. Is this true and if so why?
This is not true.
However, on MacOSX, swapped out memory is saved into plain files in
/private/vm. So if you use a lot of virtual memory, you will need
this space to be allocated on the file system.
Usually in unix, the swap area is allocated statically, in a
fixed-size partition. When it's full, the OS just kills processes
that need too much memory.
MacOSX will rather fill the hard disk with swap files, and only when
the hard disk is full will start to kill processes.
When you restart MacOSX, the swap files are deleted. But as soon as
you start to use more memory than available RAM, they will start to
grow again, taking space in the file system.
You will use more memory with a big screen and a somptuous desktop
wall paper. For example, a 1600 x 1200 x 24bit picture takes more
than 5MB of RAM. If you just use a plain gray background instead,
then you'd use only 3 bytes of RAM.
> Howcome with non Unix oses I can have less free space available and
> they still work properly?
Define working "properly"!
Applications would crash earlier with out-of-memory errors.
> My ibook has a 30GB drive, and I am down to 5.5GB free. I do not plan to go
> below 3GB's, but some tell me not to go below 5GB's.
>
> Is a Unix os really that much better than a DOS os?
Yes.
> [...]
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
WARNING: This product warps space and time in its vicinity.
toby
Bible John wrote:
> I am running Mac OSX Tiger. I am told that Unix oses need at least 2 GB's of
> free space in order to run properly. Is this true and if so why? Howcome
> with non Unix oses I can have less free space available and they still work
> properly?
>
> My ibook has a 30GB drive, and I am down to 5.5GB free. I do not plan to go
> below 3GB's, but some tell me not to go below 5GB's.
>
> Is a Unix os really that much better than a DOS os?
DOS was surpassed some time around 1960. Microsoft failed to notice
that they're not running on toy systems any more but continues to
produce toy software. Everyone else (in particular, Apple) switched to
industrial strength systems.
toby
> I am running Mac OSX Tiger. I am told that Unix oses need at least 2 GB's of
> free space in order to run properly. Is this true and if so why? Howcome
> with non Unix oses I can have less free space available and they still work
> properly?
You won't have any trouble with OS X until your disk actually fills
100% - and then, as others point out, a restart will clear its swap
files. You are unlikely to fill the disk with swap files unless you're
running with little free space to begin with.
>
> My ibook has a 30GB drive, and I am down to 5.5GB free. I do not plan to go
> below 3GB's, but some tell me not to go below 5GB's.
Unless you're doing a lot of data-intensive work (Photoshop on large
files, for instance), you shouldn't need more than 1GB free. But if
that's all you've got left, you should review your data management
policy. For instance, is the other 79GB backed up? Do you need it all
instantly accessible? If so, you should be using a larger or second
drive.
>
> Is a Unix os really that much better than a DOS os?
DOS was surpassed some time around 1960. Early microprocessors required
a system so primitive. Today you can run the most advanced operating
systems available on an average PC (and many of us do), which is a very
different scenario from that prevailing in say 1985.
Microsoft failed to notice that they're not running on toy hardware any
more but continues to produce toy software. Everyone else (in
particular, Apple) switched to industrial strength software
infrastructure. NeXT saw this writing on the wall more than 15 years
ago.
>
> Strange why Microsoft has chosen not to convert their OS to Unix based, as
> Apple has done.
Through business thuggery they have maintained considerable cash flow
from their junk - removing any motive to "do better". I don't see this
river of gold enduring forever, as customers wake up to the shakedown.
H-Man
>
> DOS was surpassed some time around 1960. Microsoft failed to notice
> that they're not running on toy systems any more but continues to
> produce toy software. Everyone else (in particular, Apple) switched to
> industrial strength systems.
>
Here's a really funny sidenote. I've never been an Apple guy, never really
likes the "feel" of a Mac, but that's just preference. I use Linux at home
though and love it. Recently I had a chance to visit the Mall of America in
Minneapolis and saw the Apple store there. Went in for a quick look,
thought I'd see what OS-X felt like and maybe see a new Intel system.
Anyway, I looked at what looked like their most powerful system (G5 with a
big screen and a bigger price tag). one of the things I could just
intuitively find was a selection of videos to open and look at. So I picked
the hi-res movie selection and opened it up. The movie player (QT) opened
so large that I could not get to the control buttons at the bottom of the
screen, it was blocked by the launcher? is that what they call it? Anyway,
as nice as the system is, and seemingly very intuitive, nice and clean
interface, very refined, I left with a sense that it was more a toy than
anything I've used so far. The OS might be "industrial strength" but it
seemed that the multimedia king has some unfinished details in there.
In the end, it wasn't a huge deal, I quickly figured out the keyboard
workaround and went from there, just seems really funny to me that with OSX
supposedly so much "better than the alternatives", something as obvious as
this would make it to the shipped product.
--
HK
toby
H-Man wrote:
> On 28 Apr 2006 11:33:20 -0700, toby wrote:
>
> >
> > DOS was surpassed some time around 1960. Microsoft failed to notice
> > that they're not running on toy systems any more but continues to
> > produce toy software. Everyone else (in particular, Apple) switched to
> > industrial strength systems.
> >
>
> Here's a really funny sidenote. I've never been an Apple guy, never really
> likes the "feel" of a Mac, but that's just preference. I use Linux at home
> though and love it.
Me too. And on several servers.
> Recently I had a chance to visit the Mall of America in
> Minneapolis and saw the Apple store there. Went in for a quick look,
> thought I'd see what OS-X felt like and maybe see a new Intel system.
> Anyway, I looked at what looked like their most powerful system (G5 with a
> big screen and a bigger price tag). ... Anyway,
> as nice as the system is, and seemingly very intuitive, nice and clean
> interface, very refined, I left with a sense that it was more a toy than
> anything I've used so far. The OS might be "industrial strength" but it
> seemed that the multimedia king has some unfinished details in there.
No software is bug free. However in real use OS X certainly lives up to
its promises of stability and performance (as one would expect from
UNIX).
If you had used OS X for serious work every day for the last 5 years,
as many of us have, you might form a more positive opinion. Then again,
it doesn't come with Solitaire...