My system has been quite sluggish of late, with apps taking a while to load. Using Kubuntu 8.04.1

I got an error message that my home partition only had 4% space left. Certainly this explains the behavior!

But when I got my disk info I got this

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 229G 149G 69G 69% /
varrun 503M 156K 503M 1% /var/run
varlock 503M 0 503M 0% /var/lock
udev 503M 44K 503M 1% /dev
devshm 503M 0 503M 0% /dev/shm
lrm 503M 44M 459M 9% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile

Any ideas what this might be? Should I suspect that my hard drive might be dying?

Try to clenup /var directory, by deleting unused files.
You have less than 1% free space on it.

This is what i get when I run df

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 239282940 166594232 60629520 74% /
varrun 514528 156 514372 1% /var/run
varlock 514528 0 514528 0% /var/lock
udev 514528 44 514484 1% /dev
devshm 514528 0 514528 0% /dev/shm
lrm 514528 45040 469488 9% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb1 61724 5039 56685 9% /media/disk

I've never run cleanup /var before; suggestions appreciated

put the output from df in tags, it makes it alot easier to read

You have /var and /home on the same partiton (/) so
so big files in /var or /tmp , have impact on size of /home (which realy is not partition ,
on your system , but only directory). You should check this two (/var and /tmp)

Sorry, but I have little understanding of what is being suggested. In poking around another forum, I did

sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean

I'm not certain what to do next.

My df currently reads as

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 239282940 168063852 59159900 74% /
varrun 514528 152 514376 1% /var/run
varlock 514528 0 514528 0% /var/lock
udev 514528 44 514484 1% /dev
devshm 514528 0 514528 0% /dev/shm
lrm 514528 45040 469488 9% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile

re "put the output from df in tags, it makes it alot easier to read" do you mean to put it in quotes? if so, here it is

This is the result of "cat /etc/fstab" which someone suggested running

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=c7709eb9-5cfc-471c-8038-27fc718c596a / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=b7fab884-72f1-4daf-9688-e4a02aa8ddd4 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0


I also ran a search for large files (more than 10mb) and now I suspect I may be my own worst enemy, especially since I'm such a newbie at this. I have all of my work in folders on my Desktop. From looking at the Desktop, it's stored in /home. I wonder if I should just make a new folder somewhere else in the file system and remove all of my work there.

I have run
sudo apt-get clean, autoclean, and autoremove, with no changes to my disk usage.

If I do move things out of the Desktop, where should I create a new directory?

i consulted with my in-house i.t. expert (a teenager) and we suspect that with my dislike of the amd64 version of kubuntu that re-installing with the 32 version and partitioning at the same time (after i backup all of my work) may be the cleanest and most satisfying way to do this.

with the 233gb usable, how large should the kubuntu partition be? the rest of the hard drive, of course, would be for my work.

all advice appreciated....

jww

as this soap opera has unfolded, i did find the source of my problem, and i did not reinstall. i am a heavy user of audacity, and i had about 20,000 *.au files on my system ranging from 0.8-1.2mb each. they have all been backed up and now deleted from my system.

now the system is fast again.

i will add a second drive to the system where i can keep all of my work.