I noticed that the root partition is at 88% usage, and checked where I could possibly delete some unneeded stuff.
Best candidate is “/usr/lib/locale” where many language files are that I probably won’t need.
Is it safe to delete everything except “en_US.UTF-8” (used locale)?
How do I prevent regeneration of those files?
I would support redoing the installation to get the updated partitioning structure. It removes all the worries you have about disk space and you don’t have to worry about deleting files that may or may not be needed. Also they likely will be restored on an update.
I do re-installations fairly often on a VirtualBox VM testbed I have, for doing testing work on bug changes etc, so I do get a bit of practise and it takes me about 15 minutes to do a re-install. Without the practise I still think it would only take about 30 minutes as long as you are prepared.
That preparation involves making a list of the mac addresses for each interface and what ip address you use for green, blue and orange.
Also as @jon noted take a backup and download it to the pc that you have the WUI on so it is not on the IPFire machine that you will re-install.
The above does presume that you don’t have any special tunings where files are edited that normally aren’t changed as those likely won’t be backed-up unless you have added those files to the /var/ipfire/backup/include.user file.
Thanks, I will save that information for later when the proper fix is unavoidable anymore. I would have to do this on a weekend to not interrupt our users (and I wouldn’t take chances doing this in midweek).
Regarding updates: The deletion would be incorporated in the update workflow and be done manually. I could also simply use a cron job to check/delete.
Though, does anyone have infos if these files can safely be deleted?
Some weeks ago I had the same problem. I fixed it using a Live CD with GParted without reinstalling IPFire.
That was that I did:
[ I have edited the steps because, sorry]
Reduce the size of the sda4 partition.
Make a copy of the swap partition.
Delete the original swap partition.
Increase the size of the sda1 and sda3 partitions.
After a reboot all worked like a charm.
I did it first in a virtual machine and later in a production machine without problems in both cases. I don’t know if you have the same partitions schema but I guess yes. Don’t try it without to make a backup first. Best if you can try with a virtual machine.