texlive 2011 from ports

[jopeto]

Hello,

I'm trying to install TexLive from ports on a amd64 machine, as described on this website:
http://code.google.com/p/freebsd-texlive/wiki/Installing

First I ran

make -C /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portshaker-config install # Ensure TEXLIVE is checked

and that worked fine. However when I ran [cmd=]portshaker -v[/cmd] I got an error message that the /var directory had no inodes left. I assume that because of that X froze as well and I couldn't move my mouse or type anything. So I logged on to another ttyv and moved /var/db/portsnap and /var/db/sup a new directory /usr/db. I also changed the /etc/portsnap.conf and supfiles to reflect these new locations. When I logged on to X again, everything worked fine.

However when I ran [cmd=]portshaker -v[/cmd] again, I got many messages of the sort:

/var/cache/portshaker/ports/x11/zenity/
mkdir: /var/cache/portshaker/ports/x11: No space left on device
tar: could not chdir to '/var/cache/portshaker/ports/x11/zenity/'

which culminated in the following message:

[Error 14:42:49] portsnap extract failed.
[Error 14:42:49] Failed to update the 'ports' ports tree.

It seems like the /var directory is not big enough. However when I run df -h I get this:

Filesystem      Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ada0s4a      2G    548M    1.3G    30%    /
devfs           1.0k    1.0k      0B   100%    /dev
/dev/ada0s4d      2G    771M    1.1G    42%    /var
/dev/ada0s4e      1G    8.1M    918M     1%    /tmp
/dev/ada0s4f    188G    5.2G    167G     3%    /usr

which means that I have 1.1G on the /var partition. So I'm guessing the problem is different.

I found this post on the subject, however it does not seem to offer a solution:
http://forums.pcbsd.org/archive/index.php/t-12568.html

I realize that there are binary packages available for amd64
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26420
so this would be one possible solution. However since I started out with FreeBSD also for educational purposes, I would like to figure out what is going wrong in this case.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm guessing the /var directory needs to be "purged" somehow.

 

[jopeto]

As an immediate update, it looks like I've run out of inodes on the /var directory.

$ df -hi
Filesystem      Size    Used   Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/ada0s4a      2G    548M    1.3G    30%    5.9k  125k    4%   /
devfs           1.0k    1.0k      0B   100%       0     0  100%   /dev
/dev/ada0s4d      2G    771M    1.1G    42%    131k     0  100%   /var
/dev/ada0s4e      1G    8.1M    918M     1%      12   66k    0%   /tmp
/dev/ada0s4f    188G    5.2G    167G     3%    489k   12M    4%   /usr

As a result, when I try installing something else from ports, I get the message

/var: create/symlink failed, no inodes free

and the process exits with an error.

I found this post: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2005-March/079590.html

Can someone let me know which would be the files to delete safely from the /var directory as a quick fix. Maybe at a later point I will try to reformat that partition with more inodes, although at this point this is beyond me.

Thanks.

 

[jopeto]

It looks like that indeed the problem was with the number of inodes, which apparently is a documented problem with FreeBSD 9.
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=28620

This is why I used a compilation of these pages and came up with the solution below:
http://www.manpagez.com/man/8/newfs/
https://www.dan.me.uk/blog/2009/06/03/freebsd-newfs-options/
http://www.freebsddiary.org/inodes.php

1. Copied the entire contents of the folder /var into /usr/var_backup/
2. Installed lsof from ports
3. Ran [cmd=]# lsof +D /var[/cmd] to see which processes use the /var directory
4. Killed those processes using [cmd=]kill -KILL <pid>[/cmd]
5. Stopped Xorg
6. Ran
   

   # mount
   /dev/ada0s4a on / (ufs, local, journaled soft-updates)
   devfs on /dev (devfs, local, multilabel)
   /dev/ada0s4d on /var (ufs, local, soft-updates)
   /dev/ada0s4e on /tmp (ufs, local, journaled soft-updates)
   /dev/ada0s4f on /usr (ufs, local, journaled soft-updates)

   to identify the name of the /var partition
7. Ran
   

   # umount /dev/ada0s4d
   # newfs -O2 -U -b 4096 -f 512 -i 1024 /dev/ada0s4d
   # mount /dev/ada0s4d
   # cp -r /usr/var_backup/* var/

8. Reboot.

Now I'm able to run [cmd=]# portshaker -v[/cmd] and am currently installing texlive-core from the newly added port!

I guess my issue is resolved. I just have one final question.

Now when I run df -hi I get the following:

$ df -hi
Filesystem      Size    Used   Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/ada0s4a      2G    549M    1.3G    30%    5.9k  125k    4%   /
devfs           1.0k    1.0k      0B   100%       0     0  100%   /dev
/dev/ada0s4d    1.5G    514M    893M    37%    174k  1.9M    8%   /var
/dev/ada0s4e      1G    8.1M    918M     1%      13   66k    0%   /tmp
/dev/ada0s4f    188G    5.5G    167G     3%    471k   12M    4%   /usr

As you can see, the /var partition has shrunk from 2G to 1.5G. I'm guessing that this is due to the formatting. Can anyone give me a suggestion if the values I used for [cmd=]newfs -b 4096 -f 512 -i 1024[/cmd] are good or not? Maybe I decreased -i a bit too aggressively? If someone can suggest better values that will give better system performance without running into the problem of having no more inodes, I'd be very happy to hear them.

Thanks.