[SOLVED] Ran out of memory and can't access synaptic package manager in Linux mint 8 Helena

Koldfyre · 06-23-2010, 03:18 AM

Last night I tried to install a game called Nexuiz on my Eee PC 900a running Linux Mint 8 Helena and ended up using all available memory. I got a message that said it failed to install due to lack of memory space. Now when I try to go into the synaptic package manager I get a message that says "unable to copy the users Xauthorization file". I also get this message when I try to uninstall anything. Also, now even though I can go to web sites, any videos won't load. I am very new to Linux and don't know how to delete the "Nexuiz" data or even where to find it! My computer has 3.5G memory with 122.2mb available. Kernel Linux 2.6.31-14-generic Gnome 2.28.1 Please help me find and remove the unwanted "Nexuiz" file. Thanks John M koldfyre360@live.com

tredegar · 06-23-2010, 03:57 AM

Quote:

My computer has 3.5G memory with 122.2mb available.

Is this RAM memory, or disk memory? Asus made some small computers.

It is possible you have run out of disk space.
Please post the output of df -h which will tell us how much space is left.

You can easily free up some space by removing the packages for your installed software (this does not remove the software, only the packages that were used to install it, and these are no longer required).
The command to do this is sudo apt-get clean

Once you have your computer working again, you need to clean up your files and/or reorganise your filesystem.

Welcome to LQ!

Koldfyre · 06-23-2010, 04:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

Is this RAM memory, or disk memory? Asus made some small computers.

It is possible you have run out of disk space.
Please post the output of df -h which will tell us how much space is left.

You can easily free up some space by removing the packages for your installed software (this does not remove the software, only the packages that were used to install it, and these are no longer required).
The command to do this is sudo apt-get clean

Once you have your computer working again, you need to clean up your files and/or reorganise your filesystem.

Welcome to LQ!

Thank you for your help. I will try the sudo apt-get clean. I don't know what df-h is though? Sorry, like I said, I'm very new to Linux.

tredegar · 06-23-2010, 04:36 AM

Quote:

I don't know what df-h is though?

From man df

Code:

NAME
       df - report file system disk space usage

SYNOPSIS
       df [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION
       This  manual  page  documents  the  GNU version of df.  df displays the
       amount of disk space available on the file system containing each  file
       name  argument.   If  no file name is given, the space available on all
       currently mounted file systems is shown.  Disk space  is  shown  in  1K
       blocks  by  default, unless the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is
       set, in which case 512-byte blocks are used.

..... [SNIP]

So df tells you how much disk space you have free, and the -h option presents this data in a nice "human readable" form. Note there is a space between df and -h

Koldfyre · 06-23-2010, 04:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

Is this RAM memory, or disk memory? Asus made some small computers.

It is possible you have run out of disk space.
Please post the output of df -h which will tell us how much space is left.

You can easily free up some space by removing the packages for your installed software (this does not remove the software, only the packages that were used to install it, and these are no longer required).
The command to do this is sudo apt-get clean

Once you have your computer working again, you need to clean up your files and/or reorganise your filesystem.

Welcome to LQ!

I entered the sudo command and it asked for my oem password. I entered it and nothing happened. I also went into my Palimpsest Disk Utility and got the following info- 4.0GB Hard Disk ATA ASUS-PHISON SSD MBR Partition Table. 3.8GB Filesystem Linux Ext4 (version 1.0) 239MB Extended Contains logical partitions. 239MB Swap Space 239MB. Is there any way to just reset my computer? It has no CD drive.

Koldfyre · 06-23-2010, 04:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

From man df

Code:

NAME
       df - report file system disk space usage

SYNOPSIS
       df [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION
       This  manual  page  documents  the  GNU version of df.  df displays the
       amount of disk space available on the file system containing each  file
       name  argument.   If  no file name is given, the space available on all
       currently mounted file systems is shown.  Disk space  is  shown  in  1K
       blocks  by  default, unless the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is
       set, in which case 512-byte blocks are used.

..... [SNIP]

So df tells you how much disk space you have free, and the -h option presents this data in a nice "human readable" form. Note there is a space between df and -h

Do I enter that in the command line?

tredegar · 06-23-2010, 05:31 AM

Quote:

I entered the sudo command and it asked for my oem password. I entered it and nothing happened.

Then it worked

It's a pity you did not do the df -h first, because now we'll never know just how short of memory you were, or how much apt-get clean released for you.

Quote:

Do I enter that in the command line?

Yes, because it is a command. Here's mine:

Code:

tred@vaio:~$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5              42G   31G  9.1G  78% /
varrun                506M  196K  505M   1% /var/run
varlock               506M     0  506M   0% /var/lock
udev                  506M   80K  505M   1% /dev
devshm                506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
lrm                   506M   20M  486M   4% /lib/modules/2.6.24-28-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb1             367G  307G   42G  89% /media/disk
tred@vaio:~$

Koldfyre · 06-24-2010, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tredegar

Then it worked

It's a pity you did not do the df -h first, because now we'll never know just how short of memory you were, or how much apt-get clean released for you.

Yes, because it is a command. Here's mine:

Code:

tred@vaio:~$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5              42G   31G  9.1G  78% /
varrun                506M  196K  505M   1% /var/run
varlock               506M     0  506M   0% /var/lock
udev                  506M   80K  505M   1% /dev
devshm                506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
lrm                   506M   20M  486M   4% /lib/modules/2.6.24-28-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb1             367G  307G   42G  89% /media/disk
tred@vaio:~$

Wow! It worked. The sudo apt-get clean command did the trick. I now have 27% of my disk space free! Thanks so much for your help. Hopefully the next time I ask a question on this site I won't be such a newbie.