/ getting full

rblampain · 12-27-2017, 08:25 AM

I keep having /dev/sda1/ filling up on a testing desktop and getting messages saying there is no room to save files in /, I have no idea what is happening.

This message seems to pop up every few weeks or so even though my working pattern is very regular. I can then save files if I do nothing except click the save icon again ten minutes later. Clearing trash/rubbish shows more space available in /dev/sda7 or /dev/sda8 which are used constantly but not in /dev/sda1.
When I installed Debian 9 a few months ago, I had the same problem having allocated only 300M or possibly 400M to / if my recollection is correct but the system was working normally otherwise. At the time, allocating 1G seemed to be overkill to me but it's still filling up under the same working conditions.

It seems to me something gets unexpectedly written to / (/dev/sda1) that I am not aware of and cannot see but I am not familiar with that aspect of the software.
This is disk usage:

Code:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           1.6G   18M  1.6G   2% /run
/dev/sda1       922M  859M     0 100% /
/dev/sda3       6.8G  4.5G  2.0G  70% /usr
/dev/sda5       7.3G  368M  6.6G   6% /var
/dev/sda6       7.3G   34M  6.9G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda7        23G  1.1G   21G   5% /user2
/dev/sda8        23G  1.8G   20G   8% /user1
/dev/sda9       184G   60M  175G   1% /data
/dev/sdb1        92G  1.2G   86G   2% /sdb_user2
/dev/sdb5        92G  1.8G   86G   3% /sdb_user1
/dev/sdb6       275G  5.0G  257G   2% /sdb_data
/dev/sdc1        92G  1.2G   86G   2% /sdc_user2
/dev/sdc5        92G  2.0G   85G   3% /sdc_user1
/dev/sdc6       275G  8.1G  253G   4% /sdc_data
tmpfs           7.9G   14M  7.9G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup

and this is the contents of /

Code:

ls -la
total 128
drwxr-xr-x  31 root root   4096 Nov 12 20:38 .
drwxr-xr-x  31 root root   4096 Nov 12 20:38 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   4096 Nov 12 16:19 bin
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root   4096 Nov 12 16:21 boot
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root   4096 May 13  2017 data
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root   3700 Dec 27 18:41 dev
drwxr-xr-x 131 root root  12288 Dec 27 14:35 etc
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root   4096 Nov 12 16:22 home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     29 Nov 12 15:44 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-4-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     29 Nov 12 15:44 initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-4-amd64
drwxr-xr-x  16 root root   4096 Nov 12 16:20 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   4096 Nov 12 15:43 lib64
drwx------   2 root root  16384 Nov 12 15:43 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root   4096 Nov 12 16:24 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   4096 Nov 12 15:43 mnt
drwxr-xr-x  45 user1 users  4096 Oct 31 17:39 user2
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root   4096 Nov 14 18:18 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 264 root root      0 Dec 27 14:35 proc
drwxr-xr-x  34 user1 users  4096 Nov 11 13:12 user1
drwx------   7 root root   4096 Nov 24 15:45 root
drwxr-xr-x  24 root root    680 Dec 27 14:35 run
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   4096 Nov 12 16:22 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   4 user1 users  4096 Nov 12 20:41 sdb_data
drwxr-xr-x   3 user2 users  4096 Nov 12 20:40 sdb_user2
drwxr-xr-x   3 user1 users  4096 Nov 12 20:40 sdb_user1
drwxr-xr-x   5 user2 users  4096 Sep  1 13:13 sdc_data
drwxr-xr-x   4 user2 users  4096 Nov 12 21:05 sdc_user2
drwxr-xr-x   4 user1 users  4096 Sep  6 22:36 sdc_user1
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   4096 Nov 12 15:43 srv
dr-xr-xr-x  13 root root      0 Dec 27 15:08 sys
drwxrwxrwt  14 root root   4096 Dec 27 21:44 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root   4096 Nov 12 15:43 usr
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root   4096 Nov 12 16:16 var
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     26 Nov 12 15:44 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-4-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root     26 Nov 12 15:44 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-4-amd64

Could anyone tell me what I should be looking for? How to solve the problem?

Thank you for your help.

business_kid · 12-27-2017, 08:43 AM

Post the output of this command

Code:

df -h

400M sounds like a ridiculously small / drive. Most distros are se4veral GB these days.

pan64 · 12-27-2017, 09:13 AM

looks like /home is not mounted, probably that is the problem.
You can try something like:

Code:

du -sh /media /home /lib /lib64 /boot /whatever

to check...

BW-userx · 12-27-2017, 09:58 AM

never mind...

_roman_ · 12-27-2017, 12:25 PM

Well I never understood in the past the recommendation for all those partitions.

Quote:

/dev/sda1 922M 859M 0 100% /
/dev/sda3 6.8G 4.5G 2.0G 70% /usr
/dev/sda5 7.3G 368M 6.6G 6% /var
/dev/sda6 7.3G 34M 6.9G 1% /tmp

Quite intersting is your setup in regards of /tmp

You run other stuff in tmpfs but not /tmp

Quote:

tmpfs 7.9G 14M 7.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 7.9G 0 7.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup

I personally would setup lvm2 + luks and remove all those space wasting partitions. I'd also change /tmp to tmpfs

--

Gentoo has a nice tool called baobab. That is quite old and I think from gnome2 or gtk based.

I deleted yesterday 1.5 GiB of WEbbrowser data. Not sure how you name it in technical terms. but with 4 browsers I collected a lot of offline lint.

I use baobab to find those files which are really big or those directores which are really big.

hazel · 12-27-2017, 12:36 PM

A good way to get more space in any debian-based distro is to clean out your apt cache. This contains all the packages you have downloaded since the last clean-out (or since installing!)

apt-get autoclean will remove those that are out of date. apt-get clean will remove them all.

Habitual · 12-27-2017, 01:49 PM

inodes?

Code:

df -hi

Just sayin'

ondoho · 12-27-2017, 02:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rblampain

Code:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       922M  859M     0 100% /
/dev/sda3       6.8G  4.5G  2.0G  70% /usr
/dev/sda5       7.3G  368M  6.6G   6% /var
/dev/sda6       7.3G   34M  6.9G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda7        23G  1.1G   21G   5% /user2
/dev/sda8        23G  1.8G   20G   8% /user1
/dev/sda9       184G   60M  175G   1% /data

this is a ridiculous partitioning scheme (i extracted /dev/sda).
why is / only 1GB???
where is /home?
quite obviously you have to change something there; posting about it here won't help:
tedious work, moving partitions around. of course, making backups first. maybe you'll even have to buy more storage or get rif of some files. who knows.
btw, du has a switch to stay on one filesystem.

ChuangTzu · 12-27-2017, 03:08 PM

is this using the so called btrfs? If so, alot of people have reported snapshots filling /

Also, like others have said, why are your partitions so small?

RockDoctor · 12-27-2017, 03:20 PM

Lookig at my Ubuntu installation, I see /lib uses 479 MB. Doesn't leave much space for goodies under /home. My guess is that the home directories of user1 and user2 might be space hogs

rblampain · 12-27-2017, 10:59 PM

Filesystem is ext4.

Quote:

Post the output of this command

The first code section in my initial post is the result of that command.

/home is not used but

Code:

du -sh /home/defaultuser

shows all the .directories and .files take over 530MB which is probably the cause of the problem since all other files are in their own partition (/usr, /var etc)
My mistake is probably to have forgotten that even though I do not write any file in /home, it gets used automatically when I do any work under that user name.
Removing some .files in /home shows that / is using 350MB which is roughly what I expected when I tentatively allocated 300/400MB and later 1G to / (which still seems to be overkill). The reason I am not using /home is because I got fed up seeing "/home/home" in paths, irrational but it got on my nerves.

I previously had a RAID 1 system with one drive that failed and the system could not even be rebooted, so I abandoned that setup after reading that raid had become obsolete anyway and having concluded I probably did not know enough about it to set it up and use it properly. Then I reverted to my old habit of having many partitions because I regularly test and corrupt enough to the point when reinstalling a distro is the best solution. The drives I used in RAID are now used as backup and I rsync those drives with a script when I want to have my work quickly backed up although it's not the only form of backup I make.

I'll check what I've said is correct and mark the thread as solved if it is.

Thank you for the answers.

ondoho · 12-28-2017, 03:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rblampain

I tentatively allocated 300/400MB and later 1G to / (which still seems to be overkill).

more like underkill.
really, i just don't understand. this is a 250GB hard drive, why be stingy with single gigabytes? (don't answer, just roll up your sleeves and fix it)

Quote:

The reason I am not using /home is because I got fed up seeing "/home/home" in paths, irrational but it got on my nerves.

erm, what?
something smells fishy.
i never see "/home/home" in paths.
it's /home/username, e.g. /home/rlampain or /home/ondoho.
also, what ARE you using if not your $HOME?
something smells very, very fishy.

ChuangTzu · 12-28-2017, 01:44 PM

sniff sniff as well.

Last time I saw something that convoluted was an openSUSE btrfs recommended partition scheme.

DVOM · 12-28-2017, 04:28 PM

OK, I'll bite, why do you think 1GB is "overkill" for the /root partition?

rblampain · 12-29-2017, 03:37 AM

"/home/home" - I can't remember the circumstances but I used btrfs some years ago when I had that problem. I developed a psychological aversion for the term when used in computer language.
overkill? - A bad habit switching from one machine with only 64G HDD to a bigger one without thinking much on the basis that everything is in another partition. I agree I've got plenty of space to give / more but I also wanted to understand what was taking place in that mistake, I am not a professional.
I accept your criticisms.