I want to increase the size of my "Home" folder. I use it for all my work, music and videos. The partition is 200Gbs and I am using 28Gbs. To me, that means that I have 178Gbs left, but no, I keep getting the message "You only have 645Mbs of space left". Why is this, and how do I resolve it. I looked at "properties for my home folder and it says :-

NAME:- colin
TYPE:- Folder(inode/directory)
CONTENTS:- 354 items, totalling 6.2GB

LOCATION:- on the desktop
VOLUME:- unknown

FREE SPACE:- 702.8MB.

I would appreciate it if someone could tell me how to increase the size of this folder in a simple manner.

Thanks in advance

Colin M

what does `df -Thx tmpfs` say?

Please post the output of following commands to see if its possible

df -h
vgs
lvs
vgdisplay -v

root@mint:/home/colin# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0 13G 12G 500M 96% /
udev 628M 292K 627M 1% /dev
none 628M 104K 628M 1% /dev/shm
none 628M 316K 627M 1% /var/run
none 628M 0 628M 0% /var/lock
none 628M 0 628M 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sdb6 184G 15G 169G 9% /host
root@mint:/home/colin# vgs
root@mint:/home/colin# lvs
root@mint:/home/colin# vgdisplay -v
Finding all volume groups
root@mint:/home/colin#

Output from fdisk -l would be helpful.

EDIT: that's a letter l, short for "list".

EDIT 2: from the command output already given, your /home directory is on the / file system. To increase the space available for files in your /home directory you must increase the size of the / file system or put /home on another file system. Hopefully someone will explain how / is on /dev/loop0.

You have 169G free in /host partition. You can link your home directory with a folder on /host partition and then copy all you files from home directory to that new folder.
Login as root

cd /
mkdir /host/myhome
mv /home/* /host/myhome/
rm -rf /home
ln -s /host/myhome /home

This is what I get when I try hostmasters fix, and when I run fdisk -l

root@mint:/home/colin# cd /
root@mint:/# mkdir /host/myhome
mkdir: cannot create directory `/host/myhome': File exists
root@mint:/# mv home/colin /host/myhome
mv: inter-device move failed: `home/colin' to `/host/myhome/colin'; unable to remove target: Is a directory
root@mint:/# mv /home/* /host/myhome
mv: inter-device move failed: `/home/colin' to `/host/myhome/colin'; unable to remove target: Is a directory
root@mint:/# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 20.5 GB, 20547841536 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2498 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd553d553

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2 2498 20057152+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2 2498 20057121 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1a5712ec

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13725 110246031 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 13726 38913 202322610 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 13726 14936 9727326 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb6 14937 38913 192595221 7 HPFS/NTFS
root@mint:/#

This is what I got when I ran df -Thx tmpfs

root@mint:/# df -Thx tmpfs
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0 ext3 13G 7.5G 4.7G 62% /
/dev/sdb6 fuseblk 184G 18G 167G 10% /host
root@mint:/#

Are you using a livecd?

Hostmaster's suggestion was good but there were a couple of problems.

When following a procedure like that it's a good idea to stop when the system gives an error message. The first problem was that /host/myhome already exists, so use /host/<something else> that does not exist, maybe /host/h -- but use /bin/ls -l /host to see what's in /host first.

The second problem was that /host/myhome/colin also exists. Have you already tried moving your home directory onto /hosts? Were you trying to run the same commands again?

I hope you did not run the final rm -f /home because that would have deleted /home and all the files under it, and the error messages show that they would not have been copied anywhere else first!

It might be safest if you posted the output of
before trying again.

Is it a Mint thing that all partitions are MS types, not Linux?

I think he might be using the livecd.