Help with /tmp out of space

madman100 · 02-20-2007, 12:21 PM

Hi all need help keep getting this when trying to log in to one of my user the following installation problem was detected while trying to start KDE
TEMP directory (/tmp)is out of disk space unable to start KDE
i can still log in to root but not the user can i increase the size
of /tmp and if so how or can i clean it up from terminal if so how and the code i will need to do so the os is mandriva 2007
Thanks
madman100

win32sux · 02-20-2007, 12:42 PM

if your /tmp is a directory in your / filesystem and you have nothing important in it, then just delete its contents... something along the lines of (as root):

Code:

telinit 1
rm -fr /tmp/*
rm -fr /tmp/.*
reboot

keep in mind that in the above example you'd still have problems if the / filesystem itself was too full, since /tmp resides on it...

wouldn't hurt to make sure the permissions are right too:

Code:

chmod 1777 /tmp

but if your /tmp is a tmpfs filesystem then rebooting would actually clear it automagically... you can find-out by looking at your /etc/fstab file - feel free to post it also...

madman100 · 02-20-2007, 03:56 PM

Hi win32sux thanks for the help tryed the code but it would not let me remove i think that webmin has locked it even as i was log in to root so i am reloading back from my backup now how can i stop this happened again

Thanks
madman100

gilead · 02-20-2007, 04:10 PM

Just out of curiosity, what error did you get when you tried to remove the files?

As far as stopping it happening again, you need to look at the contents of /tmp and figure out what was in there so you can identify how they got there. If your /tmp directory isn't on its own partition, have a look in the other directories on that partition. It may be that your log files are using up a lot of space. Tools like logrotate are useful for managing logs.

madman100 · 02-20-2007, 05:00 PM

Hi gilead the error that i got when trying to remove was could not remove /tmp `..`
i think it bitdefender or hellanzb what causing the problem or the webmin how can i give tmp it own partion i have a 500gb in the machine so i would like to take 20gb from the home and make a partion for the tmp or just make the tmp dir bigger
i have qtparted installed on the machine how can i resize the drive when it running

Thanks
madman100

unSpawn · 02-20-2007, 05:14 PM

How about using Tmpwatch? It's default in about all distro's but nearly nobody mentions it...

madman100 · 02-21-2007, 08:44 AM

Thanks to all for the help i have reloaded back from the backup and gave tmp it own partion of 8gb so hope fully this will solve the problem of the lack of space for /tmp till i can find out what caused it to run out of space

Thanks
madman100