I am a naive to linux .
I got win XP and fedora 6 installed on my laptop(hp dv 6114).
I have fedora installed for about a month and it was working absolutely fine .
But i dont know how when i now boot and try to login as root or any other user i get
the following message :

" GDM could not write your authorization file . This
could mean that you are out of disk space or that your
home directory could not be opened for writing . In any
case it is not possible to login. Contact system administrator ."

I get this message from both root as well as any other user .

Well i got once an error last day that my disk is full but i forgot to take
action..........and now i am struk with this problem .

I dont know how to empty the /tmp folder .

Please anyone help me i am just new to linux and just know very less .

You could try logging in from a console and just delete everything in /tmp. In theory, nothing in there should be needed. Ubuntu actually clears /tmp on every boot.

Hello, folks; a Newbie here. I have a similar problem to that of Ankit: I cannot login because there is no disk space!

I am possitive the root partition has 0% free space, but there is plenty of space left in the same disk (in other partitions). I have tried to modify partition sizes (increasing the root partition) with gparted, with no luck: for some reason, it has locked the partitions (a small lock icon appears now).

My /tmp is empty and so is the trashbin...

Any suggestions here? Thanx a lot!

switch to console (ctrl+alt+f1)
log in
do a 'df -h', this should list out space of all your mount points like:

Now if your / space is full, you would have to free up some space. If you
have your /home on a diff partition, check that too.

As mentioned, in theory nothing in /tmp should be critical. You could take
a shot at rm -rf inside /tmp.. (btw, why do you think /tmp is an issue?)

you could try uninstalling a couple of packages, or something like locale purge (look it up, it removes unused locales) to free some space to get you started. The partition tools might need a min free space to enable resizing..

i found out using df -h that my drive had no space ..... and as the error
was that the GDM was unable to write due to /home full .... so i went to
my user folder in /home and then to the /Desktop i.e. /home/ankit/Desktop
and i copied sufficient data there to my FAT32 partion (which i had made earlier
by partition magic in order to see windows file in linux ) and then removed those
data folder from Desktop . This made space in my Desktop and hence in my /home .
Then i rebooted......and ever thing works fine ..........
...........if u not got any other drive u have to remove data if u wanna make space
for GMD to write scripts during login .

Thanks every one.......I would like to know that how much actually does GMD takes
or requires space and why only in /home folder ........ would be thankful if someone
could explain in some detail ..........thanks

Thank you very much for the advise and for taking some time, hashash; I'm going to try this today later (I don't have access to my dual boot computer now). Now I know I should have made a bigger / partition; I guess 3,5 Gb is a bit too little and as I have been installing cool packages, like ubuntu studio or beryl, I have eaten up all the space.
Good to know Ankit has also solved his problem!

Now if your / space is full, you would have to free up some space. If you
have your /home on a diff partition, check that too.

As mentioned, in theory nothing in /tmp should be critical. You could take
a shot at rm -rf inside /tmp.. (btw, why do you think /tmp is an issue?)


you could try uninstalling a couple of packages, or something like locale purge (look it up, it removes unused locales) to free some space to get you started. The partition tools might need a min free space to enable resizing..[/QUOTE]



Hi I am really new to this, but with the same problem.
Could someone walk me through how xactly i use commands to empty space?
Every step of the way, because right noe I can just look at the terminal and confirm that really - there is no space

(help?)

I have the same problem to log in and I changed to console (ctrl+alt+F1) and logged in but I get really BIG text and can't read all text. What to do?