I am having some trouble getting this to work. First time I tried the sequence, the commands completed with no errors, but df -h showed no difference. I rebooted (shutdown, then power back on), removed the empty /home/rw, then tried again. Seems something did hang around over the reboot?:

/home/user> sudo su -
asus-422339844:/root> mkdir /home/rw
asus-422339844:/root> df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                680M  557M   89M  87% /
/dev/sda1             680M  557M   89M  87% /
none                  680M  557M   89M  87% /
tmpfs                1011M   12K 1011M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                 128M   56K  128M   1% /tmp
/dev/sdb1              15G  8.0G  6.2G  57% /home
/dev/sda1             3.1G  2.4G  652M  79% /ro
asus-422339844:/root> mount -o remount,br:/home/rw=rw:/.rw=rw:/.ro=ro,create=mfs /
mount: / not mounted already, or bad option

any ideas? i'll have to read the man pages for  mount and work out what I was trying to achieve...

I have not removed aufs (i've read about how to do so, and don't think i could have done similar steps by accident).

I have previously booted in via the rescue console to remove a bunch of applications I did not want (mainly to replace the broken staroffice8 with ooo3)

I am running in "advanced" mode, here are the results of df -h and mount (free space now terribly low, since I installed firefox 3.0.4 ... not sure that was a great step forwards. it seems slower than ff2)

/home/user> mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on / type ext2 (ro)
none on / type aufs (rw,xino=/.aufs.xino,br:/=rw:/=ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sdb1 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=ordered)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
none on /proc/fs/vmblock/mountPoint type vmblock (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /ro type ext2 (ro)
/home/user> df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                680M  632M   14M  98% /
/dev/sda1             680M  632M   14M  98% /
none                  680M  632M   14M  98% /
tmpfs                1011M   12K 1011M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                 128M   56K  128M   1% /tmp
/dev/sdb1              15G  8.0G  6.2G  57% /home
/dev/sda1             3.1G  2.4G  652M  79% /ro

The fact that your "df -h" shows two entries with /dev/sda1, each one showing different sizes makes me wonder if your setup is hiding /dev/sda2, but performing the union correctly. If that is the case, try if this enlarges your aufs (you must have created /home/rw before, and execute the command as root):

# mount -o remount,rw,xino=/.aufs.xino,create=mfs,br:/home/rw=rw:/=rw:/=ro /

Those are the same options shown by your mount command in the aufs line, and adds the branch /home/rw to the union as read write (the br:/home/rw=rw part), and tells the union to create new files in the branch with more  free space (create=mfs)

If this works, then the command is different depending on the aufs setup (mine or yours).

Please let me know if it works...

Ok, lets try some basic things. Try this:

$ sudo mount -t aufs -o remount,rw,xino=/.aufs.xino,br:/=rw:/=ro none /

This only remounts the aufs without adding anything new. Let me know if this shows any error. If it shows the same error, I would try more things...

Also, please show me the result of executing "cat /proc/mounts", I want to check if it shows the same that "mount".

You are welcome. Hopefully, we will obtain a better understanding of what is happening here. I do not want to post steps that are not correct in all the 901s linux...

The next step is to detect what is exactly the "bad option" because we know that "/" is already mounted. Please issue the same remount command and after that execute "dmesg", the last lines of the dmesg results should give us some hints...

Also, execute "dpkg -l | grep linux-image" to find your installed linux version. Maybe your kernel is different from mine (although I did not remember changing it from the default).

The error is that it expects .aufs.xino, which is a special i-node to aufs, to be outside "/", i guess. We can remove the xino option in the remount command to see what happens, but after some reading of aufs docs and some testing in my machine, I think that I found a better solution. Please try:

# mount -o remount,prepend:/home/rw=rw,create=mfs /

After that, check errors with "dmesg", check if /home/rw is added to the union with "mount", and check if you have more space with "df -h".

(tusko crosses fingers)

rebooted and issued the mount command three times; no timeout & it works fine (at least df -h reports the correct increase in capacity... I've not tried to use the space yet)

I have edited /usr/sbin/services.sh and added the mount command after PATH (i.e. second command in the script), and it seems to work just fine. I now have as much space as I want.

Thank you tusko!

Great it works, but the problem I have is saving the edited services.sh in /usr/slib. It tells me
"The document could not be saved, as it was not possible to write to file:///usr/sbin/services.sh.
Check that you have write access to this file or that enough disk space is available"

I think it is the issue of write access. How do I grant myself write access. I am the owner of the PC and it is only a couple of months old. (eeePC 901/Linux running Linux).

I am a newbie to Linux so any help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Thanks  guiddruid,

It worked ...

I think it should not. The only problem I can think of happens if they update services.sh. In that case, after a reset, the system would be put back in the state previous to the services.sh modification, that is, it still would be usable. To solve that, you only have to reintroduce the remount command in services.sh and everything should be fine (you will not lose anything).

On the other hand, in debian based systems, it is possible to avoid modifications to a given file (e.g., services.sh) if one marks the containing debian package as "Hold" (using synaptic, aptitude, dselect, etc.). Then, you would not have to worry about an update modifying it, although you maybe can miss some important updates for that package. I'll research this at home.

Hi

Thanks Tusko for this elegant solution - it has worked for me.

Can I check one point. You indicate it is possible to replace 'rw' as the name of the new subdirectory under /home, with a name of choice. My inclination was to use something like Apps or Programs - so I remember what's in there down the line when the 16 gb space begins to fill up. Given that I have noticed that /.rw is a system file, I was wondering whether the correct command for the prepend command would be

:/home/programs=rw

or

:/home/programs=programs

I take it that even with this expanded room, there is a lot to be said for getting rid of as many unneeded files as possible on the 4 gb SSD.

Thanks for this mod, tusko. I've applied it successfully to my 901xandros/full desktop. There is one problem, though not important, the Xandros disk utility no longer shows the correct size/usage for the system storage device. Mine shows 111644328% used!