Recently in the last day or so I have been getting a warning about my computer having a low amount of disk space available and what I can do to free up additional space. The only thing different that I've done is to try and use a Virtual Box to test out other Linux OS's. Is it possible that this low disk space warning be related to the VB and not to my Main computers disk space? How can I check out how much space I am using comparing it to the space I have and see if I am indeed running low?

I used the disk analyzer and got some information but what it all meant or what I could do to change what was there went right over my head. Basically I'm looking for is; Your PC has this many GB and you are using this many GB, leaving you this amount of GB as free space.

So I can see if the low space warning is in effect directly related to the VB and naught else and I can stop worrying about it. In other words is this much ado about nothing.

herakles_14

Try the df command:

Yes, it over-summarizes file systems of which some are virtual or RAM based. But in essence this is saying that I have a total of 266G with 122G used and 131G available.

Do you have an awareness of what disks your system has installed and how they are partitioned? That would be important to consider. Here I do not have a dual boot, so you won't see a FAT32 or NTFS file system. Here's what it looks like if I plug in a thumbstick:

The point there being that another disk or partition shows up as another line in the summary. So you may see things like sda1 and sda2 if you have partitions for say Windows and Linux. The -h and -l arguments are to make the output "human readable" and to look at "local" disks only.

You can perform a man page command on df to see the full options. It claims that the -l argument works for local, but I do happen to have an NFS mount and it won't show that even without the -l option.

Either case, it's a good command to use to assess total disk space.

rtmistler;

Here is what I got with the df command:


Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 21015984 19588728 353040 99% /
none 4 0 4 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 1023496 12 1023484 1% /dev
tmpfs 206348 916 205432 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 1031736 152 1031584 1% /run/shm
none 102400 20 102380 1% /run/user


Yet when I use the command line: df -h -l
I get this:

bill48@bill48-Dimension-9100:~$ df -h -l
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 21G 11G 8.8G 54% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 1000M 12K 1000M 1% /dev
tmpfs 202M 916K 201M 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 1008M 152K 1008M 1% /run/shm
none 100M 28K 100M 1% /run/user

Which is a hell of a lot better then the first one wherein I just used the df command.
Could the first one that shows I have used 99% be the Vitual Box and if I deleted said App an reboot all should be well?? I opened a terminal entered in the df command and this time it was a repeat showing me;

bill48@bill48-Dimension-9100:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 21015984 10734824 9206944 54% /
none 4 0 4 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 1023496 12 1023484 1% /dev
tmpfs 206348 916 205432 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 1031736 152 1031584 1% /run/shm
none 102400 32 102368 1% /run/user

I am going to delete the VirtualBox and anything relating to it as since I tried to use it, it has been naught but grief for me

rtmistler, thanks for the 'df' command I will have to remember it.

herakles_14

Spotted something with the first resuks of the df commmand:


Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 21015984 19588728 353040 99% /
none 4 0 4 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 1023496 12 1023484 1% /dev
tmpfs 206348 916 205432 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 1031736 152 1031584 1% /run/shm
none 102400 20 102380 1% /run/user

It did not have;
bill48@bill48-Dimension-9100:~$ df, at the start which means if I am not in error that the 99% used was for the Virtual Box computer, right ??

That's weird. I'm not really experienced with Virtual Box, however I would not argue that it may be responsible for taking that space. Rebooting and not running it would be the test I'd try. Then it's a question of whether or not you can live with the complaints, or configure Virtual Box so that it takes less space when it runs.

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rtmistler;

I have several Live/Install DVD's of other Linux OS which I wanted to check out and it was suggested to use a Virtual Box. The resulting of which ending for me in chaos and madness. . . well mayhap no madness but it was a close call there.

You should bear in mind that every virtual disk you create is a real file on your real hard drive and, depending on the settings, this file may be as large as the size you selected for the guest operating system.
That means if you create a virtual machine with a 8GB hard drive that amount of space could well be used on your host drive. There is a setting to use dynamically sized virtual disks which only take up as much room as is actually being used by the guest OS but for smaller sized disks this may not make much difference.
If you want to free up the space these VMs take up then I would suggest going into VirtualBox itself and removing the VMs remembering to select the option to delete all associated files.
Going by a quick google and the size of the hard drive you listed I'd say your machine doesn't come up to the system requirements for VirtualBox to be useful -- that is a shame as it (and VMWare and others) really is a great, and not tah complicated, way to try a lot of distros and OSs.