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No space left on device when doing update.

I was trying to do an update using Update Manager and I got the error message:

No space left on device), E:IO Error saving source cache, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

I have attached a copy of my disk usage and it shows root as 100%. I thought that I had put the Home folder on it's own partition but I guess not.

I have also included the results of the ls -l command but fail to see what is using the space.

I am using LinuxMint Linux version 3.11-2-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.8.1 (Debian 4.8.1-10) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.11.8-1 (2013-11-13)

Thanks for your help in advance.

You have filled up your / but your separate /home, /var, /usr partitions have lot of space left. It's hard to tell what filled up your 42.7 G of /, most likely '/tmp' is out of space, required for the updates. At any rate post the output of inside CODE tags:

Code:

$ df -h

$ cd /

$ sudo du -sh --exclude={"/home","/var","/usr","/proc","/dev","/sys"} * | sort -h

I love `ncdu` for this sort of thing:

Code:

# ncdu -x /

Unfortunately it's not in the Mint repositories, but you could always just build it from source:
http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu

[100]r@r / $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 20G 20G 0 100% /
udev 10M 0 10M 0% /dev
tmpfs 377M 988K 376M 1% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 754M 76K 754M 1% /run/shm
/dev/sda2 121G 22G 93G 19% /home
tmpfs 754M 164K 753M 1% /tmp
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
r@r / $
I had problems with the du exclude pattern. I looked at the man for it but still could not make it work.
[1]r@r / $ $ sudo du -sh --exclude={"/home","/var","/usr","/proc","/dev","/sys"} * | sort -h
$: command not found
r@r / $ sudo du -sh
du: cannot access ‘./proc/15833/task/15833/fd/4’: No such file or directory
du: cannot access ‘./proc/15833/task/15833/fdinfo/4’: No such file or directory
du: cannot access ‘./proc/15833/fd/4’: No such file or directory
du: cannot access ‘./proc/15833/fdinfo/4’: No such file or directory
40G .
[1]r@r / $
I downloaded ncdu and extracted it but I wasn't sure how to run it. I tried doing an apt-get install ncdu but I got the error 28
[100]r@r / $ sudo apt-get install ncdu
[sudo] password for r:
Reading package lists... Error!
E: Write error - write (28: No space left on device)
E: IO Error saving source cache
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
[100]r@r / $
When I look at the properties for root it thinks that I have 140 Tb on my Lenovo Z560 which has about 320 Gb. Attached is a screenshot.
Thank you.

Could be a few reasons for lack of space. Be sure to look at all of the ideas like filesytem issues, recycle bin and temp files.

I'd run a filesystem check on it first maybe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rstuff (Post 5317215)

E: Write error - write (28: No space left on device)

D'oh!

Sorry, stupid suggestion...
:/

An intuitive gui tool to analyze disk space usage is baobab. That's also in the mint repositories.
Unless it happens to be installed on your system you'll probably have to install it in a live session and run it from there.

My log file is over 15 Gb. Kern and syslog are both using over 6 Gb and messages are using over 3 Gb. When I tried looking at my messages with my log file viewer my laptop locked up and I had to reboot. I tried running fsck on sda1 but it told me that the device was mounted.
Thank you

I'd run tests on the hdd, not just fsck.
I have a 160 gig drive that I dropped that say it's 2TB.

You are not supposed to type in the $ before sudo..... It's the shell prompt. Now try without $, and use code tags. Switch to Advanced mode, and use '#' which will insert code tags.

Yeah like GNU/Linux has stated finding out what the sizes of the folders within the / directory will help determine where you need to look and what you can clear up.

I would say check in /var/cache/apt, if it's full run as root #

Quote:

apt-get clean
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

or as user $

Quote:

sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

[100]r@r / $ sudo du -sh --exclude={"/home","/var","/usr","/proc","/dev","/sys"} * | sort -h
du: cannot access ‘proc/19775/task/19775/fd/4’: No such file or directory
du: cannot access ‘proc/19775/task/19775/fdinfo/4’: No such file or directory
du: cannot access ‘proc/19775/fd/4’: No such file or directory
du: cannot access ‘proc/19775/fdinfo/4’: No such file or directory
0 dev
0 initrd.img
0 proc
0 sys
0 vmlinuz
4.0K lib64
4.0K mnt
4.0K srv
8.0K media
16K lost+found
28K tmp
1.3M run
5.2M root
9.5M bin
11M sbin
25M etc
31M boot
140M opt
193M lib
3.9G usr
15G var
21G home
r@r /

I have lots to learn. I must have cut to much with my cut and paste.

I did run the clean, update, and upgrade suggested by Eddy1. It seemed to run ok for the most part. I did get some errors but I don't think they were because of being out of space.

Thanks to everyone for your help.

I have something in my proc folder called kcore that is using 140.7 Gb.

-r-------- 1 root root 140737486262272 Feb 14 21:12 kcore