Yesterday Mint gave warning messages that the root partition has run out of space. I emptied the trash and moved several GB of stuff to another drive. When I booted up today I get as far as the desktop (with nothing on it) and a login window, but when I enter the password the screen blacks out for a moment and goes straight back to the login window.
I have changed the password (getting in via recovery) but that did not help.
This is a dual boot system with Windows 8.1, which I never use anymore.
I have no idea where to go from here, please help.

you got no space to login on even .. go live (boot a live distro) to get in and delete a small file, maybe check your /tmp and remove some files in your home in your to regain some room to login then you can take care of your house cleaning.

you could to go in via your tty cli (that might work).
ctrl+alt+F(x) to switch to a different tty and login cli then remove a file or two, then switch back to your tty with gui login screen and try it.

maybe look into putting /tmp into your RAM so it empties every time you turn off / reboot your pc / laptop

1 members found this post helpful.

SaMi369,

Welcome to LQ forums.

I have had this problem recently with two computers, both running older versions of Linux Mint.

On one I removed several GB of old kernels and on the other I did a fresh installation using a new root partition of 30GB (old one was 19GB).

My inclination would be to boot from the original DVD/USB and copy/paste all data in Documents, Pictures etc to an external hard drive. This is essential!
Then create a fresh installation with a larger root partition.
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...al-data-38094/

Alternatively, if you have a swap partition, you could boot from gparted and then resize the root partition to include the space formerly used by swap.

NB All your personal data needs to be backed up first!

Once you have access to Terminal on your machine I suspect that you will find that your root partition is probably clogged up with old kernel headers.

This command will let you view all installed ones:

This command gives the total number of headers:

To remove all but the latest one, run either:

or

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ubuntu...d-old-kernels/

In the automation preferences of Update Manager in Linux Mint 19.2 onwards, you can make it automatically remove kernels which are no longer needed:
https://winaero.com/blog/automatical...ls-linux-mint/

If you are using Timeshift, do make sure that you are not saving snaphots to the root partition!!

I still think that a fresh installation is a safer bet.

1 members found this post helpful.

Was the system doing updates when you got the disk full message?

Thank you for your help so far! As I go further down the road more problems seem to crop up.

This is what I've managed to do so far, but first some information about my pc:
Running Cinnamon 19.1 currently
I have 3 internal hard drives:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 351.6G 0 part /mnt/Drive E
└─sda2 8:2 0 580G 0 part /mnt/Drive F
sdb 8:16 0 931.5G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 931.5G 0 part /mnt/Drive G
sdc 8:32 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 0 350M 0 part
├─sdc2 8:34 0 586.6G 0 part /mnt/Drive C
├─sdc3 8:35 0 1K 0 part
└─sdc5 8:37 0 344.6G 0 part /
The last one sdc5 is where Linux resides.

These were my steps:
- downloaded a new ISO of Cinnamon 19.3 (using another laptop) onto a flash drive (didn't have Cinnamon 19.1 on a flash drive).
- booted from this distro and checked whether old kernel headers were clogging up space - no, there was only 1 kernel header.
- used GParted to shrink sdc2 and enlarge sd5 (from original size 120GB).
- rebooted to Cinnamon 19.1 and could get in.

colorpurple21859 - to answer your question ... I don't know.

In the mean time I have been getting error messsages, one saying
"[ 0.057795] [Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata: please update microcode to version 0x22 (or later)
[ 6.514471] ldm_parse_tocblock(): Cannot find TOCBLOCK, database may be corrupt.
[ 6.514557] ldm_parse_tocblock(): Cannot find TOCBLOCK, database may be corrupt."
The second error message appears when shutting down. I didn't record it but it says something about incorrect protocol, the line repeats about 5 times.

So I want to do a fresh install of the 19.3 version onto sdc5. All my documents/media are on the other hard drives, so no problem there, but my Thunderbird profile is still in Home.
Previously I had full access to the other hard drives, now since this 'not being able to login issue' I don't have write permissions on the other hard drives, and when I try to change the permissions it won't let me do that because they are owned by root.
This is a problem because my Thunderbird profile is huge and I have tried copying it to a flash drive but it gets stuck after just a little while and bombs out.
I've tried following instructions to either 1) change ownership of the other hard drives or 2) make me a superuser / login as root but have had no success.
I need to be able to copy the TB profile to anywhere else before I install 19.3. (Or do I?? I assume it will be overwritten with a new installation?)

Any help please?

SaMi369,

As far as Thunderbird is concerned, there are changes in recent versions:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...rd-4175669758/

PS I now have to break off to watch the football!