GIMP, HDs, and HUGE images

[Kevin Bullock <kbullock@ringworld.org>]

Linux crashed on me tonight.

Three times.

*Never* open a 2500x4000 pixel RGB image in Gimp unless you have a few gig
free on /home.

\includegraphics{munch-thescream.eps}
\include{scream-of-mortal-terror.tex}

\begin{autopsy}

So I'm going about my business as a web designer, opening up these two
particularly large JPEGs from the office that I needed, when suddenly my
mouse starts moving very slowly and jumpily; then all of a sudden lots of
little dialog boxes from the Gimp start piling up on each other so fast that
neither GTK+ nor sawmill can draw their contents or borders.

I figured out the error message after the third reboot: something about not
being able to write to the hard drive because it was full.

"Full?" I ask myself. "It had 500MB free this morning." So I check a 'df
-h'. Sure enough, there's a whopping total of 28k left on /home. I check
zibby's home directory (I was downloading transformers for him ;p ). 250MB.
Not enough to kill off /home. I check a 'du -sh' of my homedir. 450MB.
"Shit! How did that happen?" I check each directory, ~/downloads, ~/src,
etc. Then I see there's still 350MB in my homedir. 'cd .gimp' says I. 'du
-sh' says I. 'ls -l' says I.

Then I see: gimpswap.* (3 files) taking up *way* too much space.

'rm -f gimpswap.*'

I think I'll wait until my 30G HD comes on Tuesday to try that again.

\end{autopsy}

Pacem in Terris / Mir / Shanti / Salaam / Heiwa
Kevin R. Bullock