Hi,
I’ve just tried to install KiCad on Ubuntu.
I made sure I had just enough space before the install went ahead, but the install has gone past the estimate (6.6GB) and left no space on my HDD. My computer will no longer boot.
I’ve booted from a live CD and have access to the file system, but cannot find where KiCad installs all its stuff.
I’ll have to delete some of it so I can boot from the HDD, then run the uninstall option.
Thanks.
The program isn’t that big, your problem is more likely the libraries, especially if you installed 3D models.
Look in /usr/share/kicad and kill the subdirectories. That should enable your boot again.
Your Linux installation sounds very marginal and the disk poorly partitioned.
Can you tell us more about your total setup? (and general computer use / budget etc)
It is quite unusual to use an HDD for system storage instead of an SSD. You can also get an 240GB SSD for about EUR20 That is hardly worth even thinking about. When you put in an new SSD, you also automatically have a backup in the form of your old storage unit.
And as ML9104 already wrote. KiCad itself is not very big. The vast majority of storage is used for the 3D libraries. Simply deleting those works, but it is a quite blunt axe method. You can also move them to another disk (or partition) and then put a symbolic link in the place of the directory.
Cleaning up the recycle bin and / or package cache can also free up a lot of room, especially if you have not done it for a while.
Also, with a program like Gparted you can quite easily grow a partition (on it’s end), so there are plenty of options.
My Kicad 7.0.9 on Linux Mint (same download as Ubuntu) shows everything EXCEPT 3dmodels is a total of 349.6 MB
3dmodels consumes 5.8 GB.
Very similar results for 7.99.
Removing the 3dmodels should solve the lack of space, although Kicad recommends 2+ GB of RAM and 10 GB of hard disk. https://www.kicad.org/help/system-requirements/
Hi Gents,
Never run KiCad before and just wanted to try it, so I found the web page below which suggested 3 commands.
sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-7.0-releases
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends kicad
The above commands produced an install that was larger than 6.6GB. The installer said I only needed 6.6GB so I freed up 6.7. the installer went past this and my Ubuntu system (20.2) no longer boots. I get the white Ubuntu logo and it just hangs.
System is a laptop with a i5 2nd gen, 500GB hdd, intel graphics.
Tried deleting hdd files from a live CD, but this has not helped, so it looks like I’ll be moving my data off and re-installing the OS. Live and learn.
If anyone can suggest some command lines that don’t produce multi-GB installations, then I’ll know what to use next time.
Thanks.
You can install KiCad without the libraries, but really this is not a good idea in my opinion. If you are concerned about the difference between 5GB and 10GB I would really suggest to upgrade your storage; a 1TB SSD is cheap these days.
Whether you are using KiCad or not, you should never run a Linux system with so little disk space free. If you had to delete files to free up 6GB for KiCad, well, in my opinion that is way too little margin.
It’s probably the 3D models that is taking up the space. On my Ubuntu installation they are 5.5G.
Footprints and symbols are around 150-200MB.
Time to clean up your drive if it’s running that low. 500GB should be more than enough to run Linux and a bunch of apps
try sudo du -s -h * to see what size directories are.
In general I start getting nervous if my SSD has less then about 50GiB of free space. I just emptied my trash can (recycle bin for windoze) and that freed up 7.7GiB this time.
There is also a “Disk Usage Analyzer” program for Linux. (standard on Linux Mint) that gives a graphical overview of directory sizes.
I also agree with gmc. It is difficult to fill 500GiB on a Linux system with just programs, or even with pictures. You can fill up lots of data with audio in .flac format or with movies and such. I am guessing that filling 500GiB is often the result of simply not realizing storage is not infinite, never deleting anything and many years of accumulated crud.
Did you remember to empty the Trash Can afterwards? Otherwise it doesn’t help.
Kicad is great also because the community work in keep libraries (footprints with collect standard, realistic 3D models).
This libraries have the big part on storage consumption of Kicad (I also had some installation limitations). So there have been some discussions of how optimize:
With Ubuntu if you install using apt, you can find KiCad program and libraries here:
/usr/share/kicad
Nope, KiCad binary files are under /usr/bin/ and /usr/lib.
/usr/share/ is for “architecture independent” files, basically files which could be shared between different systems, even different OS’s on different kinds of machines. KiCad component libraries are there.
Hi
UM Mate 22.04.3 Kicad Application: KiCad Version: 7.0.9-7.0.9~ubuntu22.04.1, release build
On my system the bulk in question are in /usr/share/kicad which are 6.2gb.
I have 1tb drive with 100 gb. root and 900 gb. home. Back away I had 10 gb. and while trying out think 5.99 ran out of room. Have reinstalled since and made root 100 gb. It is now at 25 gb. of installed files and my appimages, multiple Blender and others are installed in home. Don’t know if OP has single partition or one with root and home. Just a thought.
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