where did the space under the root partition go?

gongtech2006 · 01-18-2007, 05:07 PM

Hi
I am a newbee to debian linux. I found my root partition is full.
My root partition has 4 GB, but I added the size of files under the root partition, anyway they did not hit the 4GB, not even close.
Where did the space go?

Here is some output which may be useful.
command: du -hcs /*

3.3M /bin
5.8M /boot
128K /dev
23M /etc
4.0K /fai
893M /home
4.0K /initrd
44M /lib
16K /lost+found
4.0K /media
4.0K /mnt
4.0K /opt
507M /proc
3.8G /root
9.6M /sbin
4.0K /srv
4.0K /sys
68K /tmp
2.5G /usr
137M /var
0 /vmlinuz
0 /vmlinuz.old
7.9G total

Command: df

I run df, get the following
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6 4032092 4032092 0 100% /
tmpfs 253668 0 253668 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1 77749 10032 63703 14% /boot
/dev/hda10 12649928 946956 1574456 8% /home
/dev/hda8 2016016 32876 1983140 2% /tmp
/dev/hda9 15124868 2635568 11720996 19% /usr
/dev/hda7 4032092 172316 3654952 5% /var

How can I find the missing space?

Thanks

war1025 · 01-18-2007, 05:10 PM

it says there are 3.8 gigs in the root folder... I'd probably start by looking in there.

syg00 · 01-18-2007, 05:34 PM

Agreed - you could try "du / -x | sort -nr | less" for a (reverse) sorted overview.

nx5000 · 01-19-2007, 02:12 AM

If you have X window there is xdiskusage
More elaborated than du IMO..

If you are even further and have KDE there is konqeror
For gnome there is baobab

mivici · 01-19-2007, 05:47 AM

Have you tried apt-get clean yet?

Daws · 01-19-2007, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Have you tried apt-get clean yet?

Nah apt stores old packages in /var/cache so thats not it.

What I wanna know is what

Code:

3.8G /root

is all about. Its very odd to have that much in /root. All I have in /root is .bashrc and .bash_profile.

JimBass · 01-19-2007, 03:37 PM

My personal bet is we have a newbie running as root in the GUI, downloading things, but I hope I wrong. If I'm correct, then please mr. original poster, stop! Using the gui (graphical) interface as root is an invitation for all of the same problems that plague windows, like viruses and spyware. The linux security system only works if you use it, and the way to use it is to run as a regular user, who doesn't have the ability to write to system files.

Peace,
JimBass