Category: Linux/BSD

Categories
Linux/BSD

On resizing filesystems and LVM2 logical volumes

I’ve been using Debian squeeze/sid for a while now (with apt-pinning) and for the past few days I’ve been facing the “no space left to write” problem. I used the default LVM2-based disk partitioning scheme offered by the Debian installer. I thought it was okay to have a 6.5G root partition and the rest for the swap and my home partitions. Looks like 6.5G wasn’t enough for me. And the root and home partitions used the ext4(!) file-systems.

Now, here’s how you go about reducing your home’s size and increasing your root’s size.

  1. Reduce the filesystem size of the partition which has enough free space to spare using resize2fs.
  2. Then reduce the logical volume in which this filesystem resides using lvreduce.
  3. Now extend the logical volume in which the “starving” filesystem resides  using lvextend by the same amount you used in step 2.
  4. Then simply issue resize2fs /dev/VGNAME/LVNAME which should simply fill up the unallocated space in the logical volume it resides.
  5. (optional), if your reduced filesystem doesn’t mount due to a block-size mismatch, e2fsck it and apply step 4. to it.

Glad that it all worked out fine. I didn’t have to use a live cd to do this (was too lazy for that anyway). I dropped into a vt, unmounted my home (which has the “important” data) and performed steps 1 and 2 on it. My root was still mounted while I did steps 3 and 4 on it.

Categories
Emacs Linux/BSD Software

Playing with LISP on Debian Squeeze

I haven’t looked up at how you play with LISP using Vim. Not really interested either since I’m committed to Emacs *rolls eyes*.
So, assuming you’ve already done aptitude install emacs23, Let’s go ahead and aptitude install sbcl cl-asdf slime. When in doubt aptitude show sbcl or aptitude show cl-asdf.

My motivation for this post in the first place was to document the quirks with the installation I was facing last night. If you happen to notice the following with the above aptitude install:

Setting up cl-asdf (1:20090819-3) ...
Reinstalling for sbcl
Recompiling Common Lisp Controller for sbcl
/usr/lib/common-lisp/bin/sbcl.sh loading and dumping clc.
; loading system definition from /usr/lib/sbcl/sb-grovel/sb-grovel.asd into
; #
; registering # as SB-GROVEL
;
; compilation unit aborted
; caught 1 fatal ERROR condition

Error running init-common-lisp-controller-v4: Lock on package SB-IMPL violated
when interning NATIVE-FILE-KIND.
See also:
The SBCL Manual, Node "Package Locks"
mv: cannot stat `sbcl-new.core': No such file or directory
FAILED
Done rebuilding
Setting up cl-swank (1:20090908-1) ...
Setting up emacs (23.1+1-4) ...
Setting up sbcl (1:1.0.25.0-1) ...
/usr/lib/common-lisp/bin/sbcl.sh loading and dumping clc.
; loading system definition from /usr/lib/sbcl/sb-grovel/sb-grovel.asd into
; #
; registering # as SB-GROVEL
;
; compilation unit aborted
; caught 1 fatal ERROR condition

Error running init-common-lisp-controller-v4: Lock on package SB-IMPL violated
when interning NATIVE-FILE-KIND.
See also:
The SBCL Manual, Node "Package Locks"
mv: cannot stat `sbcl-new.core': No such file or directory
FAILED

Your slime setup isn’t going to be functional. Fret not. Read on.

From Debian BTS bug #549528

=======BEGIN PATCH===================
--- /usr/share/common-lisp/source/common-lisp-controller/post-sysdef-install.lisp.orig 2009-10-21 14:42:00.000000000 -0400
+++ /usr/share/common-lisp/source/common-lisp-controller/post-sysdef-install.lisp 2009-10-21 14:40:59.000000000 -0400
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@
#+sbcl
(defun get-owner-and-mode (directory)
(when (eq :directory
- (sb-impl::native-file-kind (namestring directory)))
+ (sb-impl::unix-file-kind (namestring directory)))
;; check who owns it
(multiple-value-bind (res dev ino mode nlink uid gid rdev size atime mtime)
(sb-unix:unix-stat (namestring directory))
=======END PATCH=================

Followed by,

dpkg-reconfigure cl-asdf
dpkg-reconfigure sbcl

Append the following to your .emacs, if you haven’t already.
;; Slime
(add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/share/common-list/source/slime/")
(setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/bin/sbcl")
(require 'slime)
(slime-setup)

And your Emacs is ready to roll.

Categories
Linux/BSD Personal

Updates as of 23rd Oct. ’09

I don’t know if it’s just me but there are these days in an week where I tend to worry so much that my productivity drops to near-stagnation. Just nothing seems to happen other than a tense me appearing tense. Anyway, I’m just recovering from a somewhat unhappy experience with my Karmic Beta installation on my laptop. Yes, it’s another ooh-nareshov-does-another-distro-shift post. And here’s what happened.

First, I get a call from Vadiraj on a Wednesday morning, out of the blue, from Goa. Apparently, his friend and he planned a noon-trip to this place just to score something that’s allegedly only available there (in India, i.e.). He wanted me to do a quick Google to give him some pointers. Unsuspend my laptop, I did. To connect to the internet through my USB modem, it failed. No matter what I tried – wvdial, pppd, NetworkManager – I couldn’t connect. And I went on a reboot-and-try spree. No luck. All that happened was me end up with a laptop that’d get stuck at boot trying to fsck my filesystem. Enraged, I was.

I reach office and start moving my stuff off of my laptop preparing for a fresh-install. Of, *shudder*, Arch Linux. Installation was pretty straight forward. But I didn’t really enjoy it as much I did Gentoo or FreeBSD. Not to mention all that sorcery trying to get my USB modem to work being unsuccessful. (At some point I had udev identifying my device as a CDMA modem and hal identify it as a GSM modem).

That night, no internet. The next day, installed Debian testing. But I had the same darned problem of being unable to tap my touchpad to click on, you know, things. The GNOME which Debian-testing featured didn’t have that tab under System > Preferences > Mouse where I could enable “Tap to click”. A quick Google suggested the use of GSynaptics – which had a “Tapping” tab where I promptly enabled “Enable Tapping” and had my Aha-moment.

Phew.

Oh, and, today I get a pay-your-internet-bill reminder. And I did it within minutes of seeing this. And here I am, about seven hours after I did that and back from a pretty decent string chamber orchestra organised by the Bangalore School of Music for raising funds for the Karnataka-floods relief, blogging about why my USB modem wasn’t working and the things I did in the past few days.

And regarding my worries. Wanda the Fish, the fortune teller had this to say:

First thing Wanda, the fortune teller, said.
First thing Wanda, the fortune teller, said.

P.S.: That was my first click on the Wanda-the-Fish GNOME applet after installing fortune-mod earlier today.

P.P.S.: On the upside, I got a chance to do a fresh ext4 install after all this.