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Old 04-01-2005, 11:32 AM   #1
Serendipity0404
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Distribution: Debian
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X not running, Root directory full.


Hi!

I have a debian system, which is also working as a backup server for a file-server.
Last thing I did before the X stopped working, was to install quota (1), in order to remove quotas of some of the user's accounts. I used aptitude. Its Cache I have already emptied.

My predecessor divided the hard drive as follows:

/dev/hda1 28G 28G 0 100% /
tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0% /dev/shm
tr***:/home 230G 5,1G 213G 3% /home
tr***:/projekt 152G 16G 129G 11% /projekt
tr***:/unterricht 47G 33M 45G 1% /unterricht

the tr*** is as u can guess the main server.
the /home is the backup of the home directories of all my users.

Now, i cannot start X.

The pc is running though, but in txt mode. I somehow managen to get on tty1, but now ctrl-alt-F7 would not return me to the login screen. When I type startx as a user, it shows the pointy screen with the small x in the middle, but it then appears to be hanging.

After quite a long time the following message appears:

AUDIT: current date: 7085 X: client 1 rejected from local host

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server

Xlib: No protocol specified



...
those lines a couple of times




..

giving up

xinit: unable to connect to X server

waiting for X server to shut down.



xinit: Server error.

/var 173Mb

/etc 36Mb

/usr 2,4 Gb

/usr/bin 175MB

/usr/lib 884MB

/usr/local 136K

/usr/sbin 9,7MB

/usr/share 1,2GB

/usr/X11R6 130MB

/home 2,4GB
backup/home 9,400GB

/bac/backup 25GB

/kup/projekt 16GB

/backup/unterricht 0,163MB



I already checked the /tmp and /var and they appear to be ok.

I've been on it quite a long time and I guess I am blind for my mistakes by now

I'd love any helping comments.

Zillions thanks in advance
SRNDPT
 
Old 04-01-2005, 02:52 PM   #2
Squall
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You said you've 'checked' the /tmp directory, what does that mean? Everytime I have an X problem like that, I tend to rm /tmp/*. However, that's not really the best solution, as things like KDE store information in the /tmp directory.
 
Old 04-02-2005, 12:10 AM   #3
rnturn
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Registered: Jan 2003
Location: Illinois (SW Chicago 'burbs)
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Re: X not running, Root directory full.

Quote:
My predecessor divided the hard drive as follows:

/dev/hda1 28G 28G 0 100+ACU- /
tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0+ACU- /dev/shm
tr+ACoAKgAq-:/home 230G 5,1G 213G 3+ACU- /home
tr+ACoAKgAq-:/projekt 152G 16G 129G 11+ACU- /projekt
tr+ACoAKgAq-:/unterricht 47G 33M 45G 1+ACU- /unterricht
I wouldn't waste a lot of time looking at anything that's not in a directory in the root filesystem (/dev/hda1) on down. (It's pretty safe to ignore /home, /projekt, and /unterricht; they've got tons of free space.)

As root, I'd issue:
Code:
cd /
du -sk +ACo-
and pay special attention to what is reported for the "tmp" and "var" subdirectories. Chances are you have large scratch files in /tmp that haven't gotten cleaned up. Another place to look would be /var/log. If there are old, old version of messages (for example, messages.9), those would be good candidates for deletion. If there's some reason you need to retain these logs, copy them to tape or onto another system using FTP. Then delete them. Also look at /var/tmp. Check in the service configuration to see of some system services have debugging turned on. If so, do you really need it? (If you have really large log files under /var/log or those log files are being rotated frequently, that could be why.)

Of course, you'll want to run:
Code:
cd / ; find . -type f -name core -exec rm -f +AHsAfQ- +AFw-;
to clean out any core dumps that are on disk.

Once you free up some space in /dev/hda, try looking for any tar archives that may have been left laying around. If they're not compressed, compess them. Even better, if you can verify that they're not needed, delete 'em.

Except for acting as some sort of backup system for a file server, you never said what this system is used for. If you're doing development on it, it could have a bunch of temporary files laying around. Some applications (and some developers ) do a poor job of cleaning up when thev're finished with them. (Oracle's installer, for example, is one application that's pretty bad in this way; it leaves an amazing amount of junk sitting under /tmp when it exits.) If this is a development system, this space situation is probably something that you'll running into often. If you're running a database on the system, check periodically if there are any large export or dump files sitting out on disk. They typically compress very well and you can usually recover at least 80+ACU- of the disk space taken by the uncompressed files (YMMV). If all this system does is hold backups of files from another system, make sure that as the other system grows and adds disk space, this system get more disk space as well.

Good luck...
 
Old 04-04-2005, 05:00 PM   #4
Serendipity0404
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10x, guys!

The backup of the remote host /home was overwhelmed with data.

You were very helpful, though!

At least I know now where to look for future problems.

Cheers!

SRNDPT
 
  


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