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11-22-2009, 09:52 AM
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#1
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2009
Location: Virginia
Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Posts: 10
Rep:
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Need to clean harddrive but can't
Hello all,
I'm trying to clean my harddrive with the apt-get clean command but to no avail. What am I doing wrong? Do I have to be in a particular directory?
________________________
fernando@fernando-laptop:~$ apt-get clean
E: Could not open lock file /var/cache/apt/archives/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the download directory
fernando@fernando-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get clean
[sudo] password for fernando:
fernando@fernando-laptop:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 2.3G 2.2G 0 100% /
tmpfs 1003M 0 1003M 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 1003M 100K 1003M 1% /var/run
varlock 1003M 0 1003M 0% /var/lock
udev 1003M 164K 1003M 1% /dev
tmpfs 1003M 544K 1002M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 1003M 2.4M 1000M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/volatile
overflow 1.0M 340K 684K 34% /tmp
/dev/sdb1 233G 41G 193G 18% /media/My Passport
___________________________
thanks for you help in advance!
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11-22-2009, 09:59 AM
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#2
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LQ 5k Club
Registered: May 2001
Location: Belgium
Distribution: Arch
Posts: 8,529
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You need to look in your / directory to see if there are files you don't need.
only cleans files in /var/cache/apt/archives/
You probably have some old kernels hanging around
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11-22-2009, 10:00 AM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Jul 2006
Location: Louisville, KY
Distribution: Fedora 12, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu Karmic, FreeBSD 7.1
Posts: 443
Rep:
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apt-get won't work with standard user permissions. Try this: If you are in the sudoers table, you will be prompted for your password, then the command will work. If you aren't in the sudoers table, try
Code:
su -c apt-get clean
and enter the root password.
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11-22-2009, 10:02 AM
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#4
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LQ 5k Club
Registered: May 2001
Location: Belgium
Distribution: Arch
Posts: 8,529
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@bartonski
from the original post
Quote:
fernando@fernando-laptop:~$ apt-get clean
E: Could not open lock file /var/cache/apt/archives/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the download directory
fernando@fernando-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get clean
[sudo] password for fernando:
fernando@fernando-laptop:~$
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11-22-2009, 10:11 AM
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#5
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Member
Registered: Sep 2009
Location: Russia
Distribution: Gentoo, LFS
Posts: 399
Rep:
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my debian lenny on router takes around 400M on total 1.8G HDD(it's OLD) and most of this space is also taken by utils i don't use but don't remove(who knows when they may become useful?).
look at /usr directory. see if you don't need some programs, uninstall them with apt. or do it manually(not recommended).
--
upd: i also use ncdu for cleaning purposes(it shows a disk usage). it's actual name is "ncurses disk usage". i like that util.
Last edited by Web31337; 11-22-2009 at 10:17 AM.
Reason: ncdu
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11-22-2009, 10:57 AM
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#6
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2009
Location: Virginia
Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Posts: 10
Original Poster
Rep:
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Repo - What files should I look to clean? I don't want to get rid of anything necessary.
Web3 - Same question. Is anything in /usr necessary? Or can I delete it all?
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11-22-2009, 11:06 AM
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#7
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LQ 5k Club
Registered: May 2001
Location: Belgium
Distribution: Arch
Posts: 8,529
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You can look in /var/log for the backup logs created by logrotate
You can remove old kernels using synaptic
Don't delete files in /usr, unless you know what you are doing
As suggested by web31377 use ncdu to find large files and directories
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11-22-2009, 12:38 PM
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#8
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Nov 2009
Location: Virginia
Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Posts: 10
Original Poster
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by repo
You can look in /var/log for the backup logs created by logrotate
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When I try to remove some log files (sudo rm), the systems says that the files do not exist, despite the fact that they are displayed on my screen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by repo
You can remove old kernels using synaptic
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The system tells me that there is not enough space to create the .synaptic directory and therefore cannot run the program. I've deleted a few files but there still isn't enough space.
Quote:
Originally Posted by repo
As suggested by web31377 use ncdu to find large files and directories
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I ran the program but I haven't been able to delete anything. Open Office has had internal errors since I got Ubuntu so I deleted it (700+ MBs), and when I ran ncdu again, it was fully restored.
Once again, I really appreciate your help with this matter! It's nice to more help than frustration 
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11-22-2009, 12:48 PM
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#9
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LQ 5k Club
Registered: May 2001
Location: Belgium
Distribution: Arch
Posts: 8,529
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Since you have no seperate /home partition, perhaps you can delete some stuff in your home directory,
or move them to /media/My Passport
In firefox you can delete the cache.
Take a look if your trashfolder is empty.
Do you use beagle or another software to search the drive?
They can create big files.
Quote:
When I try to remove some log files (sudo rm), the systems says that the files do not exist, despite the fact that they are displayed on my screen.
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make sure to use the correct name, and if needed the correct path. You can copy/paste in the terminal
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11-22-2009, 03:51 PM
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#10
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Member
Registered: Jul 2006
Location: Louisville, KY
Distribution: Fedora 12, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu Karmic, FreeBSD 7.1
Posts: 443
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by repo
@bartonski
from the original post
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Note to self: read, then post.
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