Member Avatar for srinivas88

I am trying to upgrade ubuntu from 9.04 to 9.10.. but the installation says that i have not enough space on /. How do i add the additional space.any command for that? I have installed ubuntu inside windows and the drive in which ubuntu is installed has a little more than 5GB of free space..my swap memory is around 2.6GB (on a 2GB RAM,core2Duo processor) and the total space on that drive is around 20GB.
Also let me know whether plain upgradation to 9.10 will be usefull or not , do u suggest me to uninstall my previous version first and then install 9.10 or simple upgradation would do good? Also i wanna make sure that all the installed packages in my current system remain in 9.10 too..

Further more when i try to start synaptics package manager, i get this error..
Failed to run /usr/sbin/synaptic as user root.
unable to copy the user's Xauthorisation file

The output of df -h on my system is ..maybe this can help u in resolving my issue :p

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/host/ubuntu/disks/root.disk
                      7.5G  7.2G     0 100% /
tmpfs                 988M     0  988M   0% /lib/init/rw
varrun                988M  140K  988M   1% /var/run
varlock               988M     0  988M   0% /var/lock
udev                  988M  184K  988M   1% /dev
tmpfs                 988M  100K  988M   1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda6              20G   14G  5.9G  71% /host
lrm                   988M  2.2M  986M   1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-19-generic/volatile
overflow              1.0M  1.0M     0 100% /tmp
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by srinivas88

Dani AI

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Short explanation: running Ubuntu "inside" Windows with the loopback disk file created at install (the Wubi method) means your entire root filesystem lives inside a single file with a fixed maximum size. When that image fills, the upgrader cannot download/unpack packages and the GUI package tools can fail. The Synaptic error you saw is the classic X/authorization problem that happens when a graphical program is launched with plain terminal sudo — use a GUI privilege helper instead of plain sudo for GUI apps.

Practical options (ordered by safety and reliability):

  • Quick triage: find what is consuming the most space and remove large unwanted files first. For example, use a one-line disk-usage probe to list the biggest top-level folders:

    sudo du -xh --max-depth=1 / 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -n 20

    Target large caches, old logs, huge downloads, and very large files in your home. Clearing package caches and removing unused packages helps but may only be a short-term fix inside a capped image.

  • Preserve packages and data before making changes: export the installed-package list and archive home so you can restore after a reinstall or migration.

    dpkg --get-selections > ~/packages.list
tar -czpf ~/home-backup.tgz /home/youruser
cp -a /etc/apt/sources.list* ~/apt-sources-backup/

    After a fresh install you can reapply the package list and update repos to reinstall the same set.

  • Best long-term fix: migrate off the loopback image to a real partition (or do a fresh install onto a proper partition). That removes the artificial size cap and makes upgrades reliable. If you must keep the Wubi image, there are community procedures to create a larger loop image, copy the filesystem (rsync while preserving permissions), and swap images — but those are riskier than doing a dedicated-partition install, so back up first.

Extra notes: run Synaptic from a graphical privilege helper (for example gksudo synaptic) rather than plain sudo to avoid the Xauthority error. Always back up Windows data before resizing partitions or performing low-level disk work. As other posters observed, moving to a larger, dedicated install is the least error-prone solution for future upgrades.

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Member Avatar for orwell84

Try sudo apt-get clean and sudo apt-get autoremove .

Member Avatar for srinivas88

Well tried all that..Anyways my problem is solved now..it seems i had given the installation size of ubuntu as 7GB at the time of installing it along with windows vista..Overtime that got filled..Another problem was that i had not cleaned my tmp folder which had a lot of crap..I cleaned it by navigating to /tmp and typing the command [TEX]rm *[/TEX]
with root previleges(sudo su)..Now I have installed ubuntu 10.10 with an installation size of 15GB ,I think that should be enough..I also got all the previous softwares that were installed in 9.04 to 10.10 with the help of selections, will give more info on how i did that if anyone wants...:icon_smile:

Member Avatar for wulaishiwo

Hi srinivasjinde,

Updating Ubuntu is usually a pain. I can't help much in your specific problem, but I suggestion you upgrade into 10.04(10.10 is not stable if you have some uncommon need).

Besides, you can ask questions in Ubuntu's forums, they are very responsive.

Member Avatar for srinivas88

can you tell in what sense 10.10 is unstable? and when can we expect a stable version of it.I'm using ubuntu more frequently now, mostly for coding purpose..

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