Hi, I am very new to Linux. Somebody gave me a computer with XUbuntu installed and it has been working fine for months. However I can't solve these errors I'm getting. I think the disk may be full. I have done web seraches but find the command line instructions confusing. I am generally a Windows user. I have some experience of HTML and DOS commands.


X.Org X Server 1.10.4
Release Date: 2011-08-19
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-29-server 1686 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux law22-Optiplex-GX270
Current version of pixman: 0.22.2

The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
Cannot close "/tmp/file1IJwvk" properly (not enough space?)
Output file "/tmp/file1IJwvk" removed

The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
Cannot close "/tmp/fileEv4fpu" properly (not enough space?)

Keyboard initialization failed.

Fatal server error:
Failed to activate core devices.

Please also check the log file at "var/log/Xorg.0.log"

Closing log
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error


Tried du -mx /| sort -n | tail
Got various outputs saying permission denied
E.g.
du: Cannot read directory 'root'/: Permission denied

The permission issue is likely because you ran the command as your normal login user rather than "root".

On most Linux distributions you can simply become the root user by typing "su -" then providing root's password when prompted.

For most Ubuntu based distributions though, I believe you're required to use sudo when doing root level commands. (sudo is used to run commands as the root user - it exists in other Linux distributions as well but isn't required by default as it is on Ubuntu).

sudo du -mx /| sort -n | tail

sudo will prompt for a password - the one it wants is the password you used at login - not root's.

You can run "df -h" as any user to see if you in fact have a full filesystem. Your messages indicate you likely do. On some systems /tmp is a spearate filesystem and on many it isn't. If you see /tmp as a filesystem when you run "df -h" you can change your command to only look at /tmp:

sudo du -mx /tmp |sort -n |tail.

Note that /tmp is the "temporary filesystem". In general files there are supposed to be ephemeral so it is usually safe to delete them (so long as they are not currently "open"). Before deleting a file type "lsof <file>" to see if it is in use. If not then it is likely safe to delete from /tmp.

If /tmp is part of the root filesystem (/) then your issue may not be /tmp at all - it is more likely to be /var/log. There you do have to be careful because files such as /var/log/messages ARE open by syslogd so you have to stop syslogd before deleting the file.

Thanks, MensaWater.

This is what I got when I ran du –mx:

161 /usr/share/icons
280 /usr/src
313 /lib/modules
376 /lib
550 /usr/lib
750 usr/share
1732 /usr
15893 /var/log
16170 /var
18369 /

This is what I got when I ran df –h:
/dev/sda1 Size 20G Used 14G Use 74% Located in /
udev 494M 4.0K 1% /dev
tmpfs 201M 740K 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 0% /run/lock
none 501M 0 0% /run/shm
/dev/sda5 17G 323M 3% /home

Your df doesn't show /tmp so presumably it is part of the root (/) filesystem. The root filesystem is only 74% utilized at the time you ran df -h so it doesn't seem likely your issue was space. However it isn't impossible - some processes will create large files in /tmp and fill up the filesystem then die - when they die they delete the files they were trying to create. In fact your original message shows such a deletion occurring:
I notice for your du output you don't list /tmp. Have you verified /tmp exists (run ls -ld /tmp)? If you run "df -h /tmp" does it in fact confirm it is part of the root filesystem (that is does it give the same output as "df -h /")?

You should also examine /var/log/messages to see if it has any errors (especially any indicating a full filesystem).