root partition full, not sure how; where are my files?

lefty.crupps · 11-14-2005, 01:28 PM

It seems that my root partition (4GB) is full; "df" says its full and I cannot load Synaptic repos due to "no space."

This has happened to me twice, when I tried to delete files on a different partition that were larger than the root partition; the machine's attempt to put these large files into my small root partition's trash caused those problems. I've tried to avoid that since. I don't think that I've moved anything large from the large partition to the smaller system partition, but its still full. The Trash is empty.

Any way to look for lost files or to run some sort of disk cleanup? Or where might I find these files?

Also, somewhat related, is there any way to have Konqueror show that size of all-subfiles-and-folders, as opposed to it just saying that folderx is 14k when its obviously holding a lot more?

mos · 11-14-2005, 03:49 PM

well one of the things you can do to free up some space is to do this:
apt-get clean
also uninstall applications you dont use, they will take up space. and your 'trash' is in your /home/ partition

if you want to paste the outputs of these commands I might be able to help you figure out a partitioning scheme that is more useful to you.
df -h
cat /etc/fstab

lefty.crupps · 11-14-2005, 09:46 PM

sure.

Code:

[~]$ cat fstab.txt
# Static entries below, do not use 'users' option in this area
/dev/hda1 / reiserfs defaults,noatime,notail 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 /home auto defaults,noatime 1 2
/dev/hdb5 /home/XXX/bigboi ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0

# Dynamic entries below, identified by 'users' option
/dev/hda4 /mnt/hda4 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hdb1 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,dev,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,users,dev,ro 0 0

and

Code:

[~]$ cat df-h.txt
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1             5.1G  5.0G   13M 100% /
tmpfs                 252M     0  252M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda3              64G   24G   41G  38% /home
/dev/hdb5             146G  140G  390M 100% /home/XXX/bigboi
/dev/hda4             4.7G   33M  4.5G   1% /mnt/hda4
/home/XXX/d1.iso              4.3G  4.3G     0 100% /mnt/temp

I am pretty sure they're set ok; the system partition shouldn't fill 5gb, should it? and my hdb5 should not be filled either...
This is a pretty standard install of mepis, with a few progs added. I don't like the looks of this.

here is how my apt-get update is looking:

Code:

Failed to fetch ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/un...y-i386/Release  Write error - write (28 No space left on device)
Reading Package Lists... Error!
E: Unable to write mmap - msync (28 No space left on device)
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
root@5[XXX]#

wow, what is going on here?

mos · 11-14-2005, 09:56 PM

tell me the LAST line of output of each of these commands (make sure to run this as root or you will get wrong sizes):
du -h /var
du -h /usr
du -h /root

also, have you done the apt-get clean yet?

lefty.crupps · 11-16-2005, 09:36 AM

I'm not at that box right now but if you want me to do so later I can. Yeah, I apt-cleaned. I found the error though: me. (Usually is). I had rin a program in root when i launched it from the cli and its temp file location chewed up my hda1 root partition space. The hdb5 i am pretty sure is due to recently copying large amounts of data onto that drive (about 7 DVDs). Yeah I should have thought of these but I didn't!

Thanks for your help. Would you like me to post those commands still, for a mutual learning experiece? Happy to do so...

mos · 11-16-2005, 09:40 AM

nah if you found the answer its all good

archtoad6 · 12-02-2005, 07:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by lefty.crupps
...
Also, somewhat related, is there any way to have Konqueror show that size of all-subfiles-and-folders, as opposed to it just saying that folderx is 14k when its obviously holding a lot more?

Look at du ("rtfm"

).

lefty.crupps · 12-02-2005, 09:15 AM

I know "du" but its not part of konqueror. thanks archtoad6, i think!

mikeyman · 12-05-2005, 04:55 AM

Lefty...you run du from a shell prompt "konsole". It is a command line program. You can find out more by typing man du, but a quick du * -sh will give you a summary listing of what each file in the file system takes up from that point lower. The -sh switch tells it to check sub folders and display in human readable format. From there you can pick the biggest one and drill down. Sometimes you have to check the /var directory because the log files and apt-cache are stored there. These can sometimes accumulate over time.

archtoad6 · 01-20-2006, 08:04 AM

I think what he meant is that it doesn't solve his "somewhat related" problem, which is specifically how to get Konqueror to do something -- presumably to improve the GUI experience from his perspective. On re-reading this today, I realized I would also like to know how to do that. Then I realized that I do, sort of: Right click (or equivalent0) on the target folder * select "Properties". The info is under the "General" tab, in the middle section of the dialog box. I have no idea if you can, or if the developers would think you should want to, change the regular display.

BTW, a useful addition to any CLI command for examining partitions & filesystems is | grep ^/, e.g.:

Code:

mount  | grep ^/
du -h  | grep ^/
# etc. etc. etc.

demerson3 · 01-31-2006, 05:21 PM

The best tool I know for this is the FSView ("file size view") plugin for konqueror. If you're already using konqueror, and you don't have FSView, then all you need to do is install the konq-plugins package.

As far as I can tell, Konqueror's FSView beats the socks off of all the other tools. It shows directories and files in a "box-in-box" view, and even puts names and human-readable (e.g. 200 MB) sizes on the bigger boxes, where there is room. I've looked at screenshots for baobab, filelight, kdirstat, and a few others, and none of them comes close to FSView in terms of showing the maximal amount of useful information.

To be fair, FSView is kind of sluggish, and doesn't update dynamically as the file system changes. Some other tools might be quicker. It does, however, allow you to click on a sub-directory box and expand that to show its details.