Because we are in a little town (wide spot in road) the DSL is not the most 
reliable.  That is why I down loaded the 8 disks from another source and 
wanted to update systems to SL 5.5.
This install try was an update and not a new installation.
There have been a lot of additions to this system, for doing FFT, Power 
Spectral Density, and a lot of signal processing.   Unfortunately /usr has 
expaned beyond our first guess and /usr/local is almost empty.
Since these may not be adjacent partitions.  Is there anyway to expand /usr 
and shrink /usr/local.  

Thanks for the insight.

Larry Linder

On Thursday 22 July 2010 10:32, you wrote:
> Larry Linder wrote:
> > When installing SL5.5 over SL5.4 about mid way into the Disk 2 I get an
> > Error message to REBOOT.
> > 204 Meg on /mnt/sysimage/usr
> >
> > When I look at /mnt   it is empty after reboot.
> > My guess is that update ran out of disk space, and the the sysimage/usr
> > is removed after ERROR is detected and REBOOT message is displayed.
> >
> > Is there anyway to change the location of sysimage/usr to some other disk
> > on the system?
> >
> > The sda? contains all the system directories and is 36 G, about 1/2 of it
> > is uncommitted.   /usr is 8G and 94% full.  Other directories have at
> > least a G of spare space.
> >
> > I need to change partition sizes but hate to waste a lot of time
> > guessing.
> >
> > Thank You
> > Larry Linder
>
> Hi Larry,
> One quick question before I proceed.  Are you doing a real "upgrade" or
> an "install"
> An "upgrade" is where SL 5.4 stays there and you just update the
> packages in it.  If that is the case, using the installer isn't the
> recommended way of updating it.  It is much easier to to an upgrade via
> yum. http://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/howto/upgrade.5x
>
> An "install" is where you wipe and reformat everything except maybe your
> home and data partitions.
>
> I am going to assume that you are doing a "install" or SL 5.5 over a
> previously installed SL 5.4.
>
> If you are doing this, then you *need* to reformat the partitions that
> do not contain your home area or data.  Otherwise the install starts
> adding to what is already there, and as you saw, it can fill up.
>
> Patitions you should format if you are doing an install.
>
> /
> /usr
> /var
> /boot
>
> As Steve said in a previous email, if you can fit everything onto /
> there is often no reason to create a /usr.  Take that space and add it to /
>
> Hopefully this is enough information, along with Steve's,  to get you going
>
> Troy