/opt at 96% (100+ megs free) Remove Old Java Versions?

[George Lenzer]

I am in a situation where our /opt file system is 96% full and causing problems with the installation of HP OV Data Protector 6.1. Looking in /opt, I'm wondering if I should uninstall older versions of Java to make space? I installed Java 1.5 and Java 6 over the weekend to try and get Data Protector updated from 5.1 to 6.1 But I have Java 1.3 and 1.4 on the system. As far as I'm aware, no applications we use require these older versions of Java. But I don't know if any system software relies on them. Any ideas?

Beyond that, I have 490 free physical exents in vg00. I *could* extend /opt a bit, I just really don't like to waste the space there since most of what we use lives in /usr. Would extending the logical volume and the file system be advisable instead?

[Sharma Sanjeev]

Hi George

If you can not move/delete any stuff from /opt, than you need to go extend only.

Regards
Sanjeev

[George Lenzer]

As much as I was hoping to avoid extending /opt, it looks like I have no choice at the moment. It also looks like I need to extend it by quite a bit. I pushed it up to 600 logical extents and the Data Protector installation still complained that there wasn't enough space. I think will have to find out if Java 1.3 and 1.4 (and anything else in /opt we don't need) can be removed or not. If I extend /opt any farther, I will have used up the last free extents in vg00.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Hi George,

I just went through this a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't get any definitive answers from my developers about whether any of these historic versions of java were still used so I took the gradual approach and renamed them, waited a week for something to crash, then rebooted the server to make sure nothing in the startup was going to fail over missing java stuff, then blew them away. It takes a little time, but it's the safe way, and /opt is static enough that you can probably afford to go slowly.


Pete

[George Lenzer]

Pete

Thanks for the advice. I'll try that approach starting with Java 1.3 now since I'm doing a reboot. I did wind up having to go with a full lvextend using all the remaining logical extents. Now... to see if Data Protector will install correctly.

[George Lenzer]

Data protector 6.1 installation worked! Once I determine if I need Java 1.3 and 1.4, and I've restored my IDB, I might be able to remove the old 'omni.old' dirs I left around from DP 5.1. For now I think it might be guesswork figuring out if Java 1.3 or 1.4 are really needed since each system's use of Java might be different. I should probably head over to Sun's site to get info on API compatibility between the different versions of Java. Need a few more hours in the day for that.

[Steve Post]

I barely use java here. I trash the old versions that have not been used for years.

And assuming I am WRONG....
I have a backup on an alternate disk.

hmmmm. Wait a minute.....

I have a big, empty external filesystem on vg01 called /bigdisk.
cd /bigdisk
mkdir java
cd /opt/java
find . -print | cpio -pdumvc /bigdisk/java
cd ..
rm -r java
ln -s /bigdisk/java ./java

Now I have java in /opt, but it is not taking up space on the /opt filesystem. It is taking up space on the /bigdisk filesystem.

When I installed omniback, it wouldn't go in because the /tmp filesystem couldn't handle it. So I made /tmp/omni_tmp be a link to this big disk.

I also put omni's /var parts and /opt parts on this /bigdisk.
It's been working fine for years.
...Java too....and perl.

steve

[George Lenzer]

Steve

That's a great idea since /opt stuff isn't usually something the OS relies on. I've used this same trick for our third party apps when space has been tight.