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04-15-2017, 12:41 PM
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#1
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2015
Location: Washington State
Distribution: Mint Linux 17.2
Posts: 6
Rep: 
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Hard drive keeps filling up
I am currently using Linux Mint 17.2 cinnamon. About 2 months ago, my computer slowed way down. It was to the point that the disk usage analyzer would take at least 2 hours to run, then got steadily worse. I took it to a technician here in SW. Washington who specializes in Linux.
After being without my computer for over a week, my computer was all cleaned up and as fast as it was when Linux was first installed. He said he had to use nemo in terminal to clean up all the temp files that creeped onto my hard drive.
It now looks like I am having the same problem again. 
My question is: How do I go about using nemo to clean up my hard drive? I am showing 189.8GB of data on my hard drive, out of 487.5GB. I should not have that much data on here, so somehow something is filling up my hard drive.
That technician won't tell me how to use nemo. He just tells me to bring in my computer and he'll take care of it. I can't afford to fork out almost $100 every time this happens.
Thanks in advance
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04-15-2017, 12:50 PM
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#2
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Senior Member
Registered: Mar 2009
Location: Earth, unfortunately...
Distribution: Currently: OpenMandriva. Previously: openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, CentOS, among others over the years.
Posts: 3,881
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Quote:
Originally Posted by whiteknite1963
I am currently using Linux Mint 17.2 cinnamon. About 2 months ago, my computer slowed way down. It was to the point that the disk usage analyzer would take at least 2 hours to run, then got steadily worse. I took it to a technician here in SW. Washington who specializes in Linux.
After being without my computer for over a week, my computer was all cleaned up and as fast as it was when Linux was first installed. He said he had to use nemo in terminal to clean up all the temp files that creeped onto my hard drive.
It now looks like I am having the same problem again. 
My question is: How do I go about using nemo to clean up my hard drive? I am showing 189.8GB of data on my hard drive, out of 487.5GB. I should not have that much data on here, so somehow something is filling up my hard drive.
That technician won't tell me how to use nemo. He just tells me to bring in my computer and he'll take care of it. I can't afford to fork out almost $100 every time this happens.
Thanks in advance
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nemo is a file manager for Linux, see here.
I would recommend you try and find out what is causing your tmp folders to fill up, in the first place, as your going to continue to have the same problem, unless you can pin point the cause of it.
You should be able to delete, whichever files are not in use from your /tmp folder and possibly (depending on your distro) ~/tmp folder.
Hope this helps.
Last edited by jsbjsb001; 04-15-2017 at 01:08 PM.
Reason: fixed link
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1 members found this post helpful.
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04-15-2017, 03:20 PM
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#3
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Senior Member
Registered: Dec 2003
Location: The Key Stone State
Distribution: CentOS Sabayon and now Gentoo
Posts: 1,249
Rep: 
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As a start you could boot into a recovery CD/DVD and then mount your system and delete everything in /tmp for start.
As jsbjsb001 said you need to find out what is filling up your /tmp directory.
Last edited by lazydog; 04-15-2017 at 07:17 PM.
Reason: fixed /tpm to /tmp
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1 members found this post helpful.
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04-16-2017, 05:07 AM
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#4
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Senior Member
Registered: Mar 2009
Location: Earth, unfortunately...
Distribution: Currently: OpenMandriva. Previously: openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, CentOS, among others over the years.
Posts: 3,881
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If your not sure how to go about finding out what might be causing your /tmp folder to be filling up, try the following commands;
Code:
ls -laR /tmp
file /tmp/*
This *might* give us some clue, as to what *might* be causing your /tmp folder to fill up.
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04-16-2017, 05:23 AM
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#5
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,418
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Run this and post the output - it will require your password, and may take minutes (minutes, not seconds) to complete, so wait.
Code:
sudo du / -xh | sort -hr | head -n 20
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04-16-2017, 08:50 AM
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#6
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Senior Member
Registered: Feb 2009
Posts: 4,667
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Quote:
Originally Posted by whiteknite1963
My question is: How do I go about using nemo to clean up my hard drive? I am showing 189.8GB of data on my hard drive, out of 487.5GB. I should not have that much data on here, so somehow something is filling up my hard drive.
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Your hard drive is only 40% full. Your hard drive is not "filling up" and is probably not the reason why your computer is running slow. It is perfectly normal for Linux to create various temp, cache, and log files. In my opinion, there is no benefit (and likely great risk) for a user such as yourself to run the file manager as "root" and delete system files.
Here is a better approach, in my opinion:
1. Tell us about your hardware (computer brand, model, CPU, RAM, hard drive, graphic card, and any other details you think might be relevant).
2. When your computer is running slow, use built in Linux tools like System Monitor to analyze the reason why. Is your hard drive full? Is your CPU running near 100%? Is your RAM filling up and the system is using swap instead?
3. Upgrade your hardware if necessary. For example, you could quadruple your storage by purchasing a 2TB hard drive for under $100.
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04-16-2017, 10:44 AM
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#7
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Senior Member
Registered: Mar 2009
Location: Earth, unfortunately...
Distribution: Currently: OpenMandriva. Previously: openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, CentOS, among others over the years.
Posts: 3,881
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I would suggest you post the output of the commands, listed in posts #4 and #5 as well as the following one below, failing that;
As let's not confuse things anymore than they already are, and take one thing at a time.
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04-16-2017, 11:01 AM
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#8
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Senior Member
Registered: Nov 2011
Location: London, UK
Distribution: Debian
Posts: 1,959
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If you want to see how much is in each linux partition, enter the following command into a terminal screen: This will give you partition size and % usage. You will get an instant answer.
If you have a lot of rubbish files, they are likely in the rubbish bin - which you can empty.
If you have files in /tmp, a reboot will automatically remove them.
There are a few other cache files - but they are there to speed up your computer.
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04-16-2017, 11:05 AM
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#9
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Senior Member
Registered: Aug 2007
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Distribution: Gentoo
Posts: 1,001
Rep: 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by snowpine
Your hard drive is only 40% full. Your hard drive is not "filling up" and is probably not the reason why your computer is running slow. It is perfectly normal for Linux to create various temp, cache, and log files. In my opinion, there is no benefit (and likely great risk) for a user such as yourself to run the file manager as "root" and delete system files.
Here is a better approach, in my opinion:
1. Tell us about your hardware (computer brand, model, CPU, RAM, hard drive, graphic card, and any other details you think might be relevant).
2. When your computer is running slow, use built in Linux tools like System Monitor to analyze the reason why. Is your hard drive full? Is your CPU running near 100%? Is your RAM filling up and the system is using swap instead?
3. Upgrade your hardware if necessary. For example, you could quadruple your storage by purchasing a 2TB hard drive for under $100.
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Concur (pls. post as well the output of the command "mount" and tell us pls. if you're using a HDD or a SSD).
And btw. I didn't understand 1) what becomes slow and 2) why everybody is focusing on "/tmp" (as it isn't mentioned in the root post...).
Cheers!
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04-16-2017, 12:27 PM
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#10
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Senior Member
Registered: Apr 2004
Distribution: slack what ever
Posts: 1,077
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04-16-2017, 08:48 PM
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#11
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LQ Guru
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: USA and Italy
Distribution: Debian testing/sid; OpenSuSE; Fedora; Mint
Posts: 5,524
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is many times a ramdrive, in memory. I think your tech was speaking in a very broad sense, and leading you to nemo as a red herring. You're probably filling up with log files in /var/log. You might nave a VERY LOW Logging level that creates huge files.
You can use find:
Code:
$ find /var/log/ -size +10M
will find all files larger than 10MB in /var/log. You get the basic idea. You might also try running that command on /home. The entire physical drive does not have to fill up to cause stalls.
If one partition fills up, on a multi--partition system--it can cause problems. I hope this helps.
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04-17-2017, 01:28 AM
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#12
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Senior Member
Registered: Apr 2010
Posts: 2,290
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Agree with AwesomeMachine, check /var/log from my experience this is one of the culprit.
Good luck!
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