Why do my systems grow disproportionately in space?.
 

Hello,

I would like to know if it is really possible to prevent the system from running out of space due to constant updates.

In another forum they advise me that if we leave "enough room from the beginning" (something I don't know what it means) and we do a cleanup of cached packages regularly we will never run out of space.

After finishing updating and installing some things in the directory and cleaning with "bleachbit" the system had in total about 9.2GB occupied, today after an "update" it has already 9.6GB.


In the other system that I had installed I reached 23GB, and in my directory, and in the set of installed applications there is basically the same between the two systems ...


What can I do so that the system does not increase so disproportionately?.
Am I doing something wrong, or is it just normal for this to happen.

Thank you very much for any comments.

I don't know what you're complaining about. 21% occupancy is a very reasonable figure for a root partition, especially when there is no separate home partition. You've made it nice and large too; I've never used more than 30GB for root, though I do use a home partition as well. You should do fine.

You say yourself that you have been installing extra stuff. Most people do that in their early days with Linux so there is bound to be an initial jump in the space used, but you probably won't go on adding new things. Once you have what you need, that will be that.

Or, "relax, and go find a real problem to worry about".

My point is that the system that currently has the 23GB also started "very beautiful" ...

What i did wrong? I did not added anything different of what i have now in the new system already installed.

I'm not familiar with mx-linux so my advice will have to be generic.

du -Sxb / | sort -n is a good good way of finding out where root filesystem space is being used. Compare its output between systems, or over time and you should be able to identify what is growing... then you can decide what if anything can be done about it.

It's not unusual to have 15-20GB used in a typical root partition when you have a reasonable amount of software installed.

edit:
Ok, a quick google search tells me that mx-linux is debian based and uses apt-get, so a
sudo apt-get autoclean or the more severe sudo apt-get clean will likely get you some space back if you've not been clearing up the old downloaded package updates.

I'm not really a debian guy though, so best to read up on this yourself before doing either of those.

You have nothing to worry about.

Explore the built in script smxi, as a suggestion

is useful for removing unwanted updated files

Another nice gui tool for seeing and analyzing disk space usage is Filelight. You can install it with:
Since you have the same applications installed on the two systems, the one with larger disk usage is likely due to something happening in your home directory. Filelight or the previously mentioned command line methods should help you see exactly what's eating up your disk space. Using apt autoremove or apt clean should clear out some space, but it's unlikely to clear out more than a few GBs. Updates can wind up using more space, especially kernel updates, but generally not more than 500MB for each new kernel installed. Apt autoremove will clear out the old kernels and get you back that 500MB. Apt clean will clear out the downloaded debian packages stored in /var/cache, but again, that's usually not more than a few hundred MBs. If you're running a server, /var can fill up pretty fast, but that doesn't seem to be your use case.

Bottom line, the excessive disk space usage over time is probably not due to the update process. Something else is probably going on. Check your systems over with Filelight or the command line utilities suggested above to zero in on what's causing the problem.

Filelight is to KDE what baobab is to GNOME.

Hola, Camello,

In your first post, you mention that previous advice had recommended properly sizing the partition to begin with. Admittedly, this is a judgement call, but as others have said, as long as your /home directories don't saturate the disk usage, 48 GB is likely sufficient and your root partition should not grow "disproportionately", to use your term.

I think the 2nd recommendation is where you should be looking : managing your package cache. When you update / upgrade your system, you install new versions of already installed software. The new versions rarely take up more disk space. However, all of the packages for the older versions of software will remain in your local package "cache" until you remove them. Each linux distro has its own tools for doing this. Find the appropriate tool in MX and explore this aspect. I usually keep packages for the currently installed version of software as well as one previous version.

Several members here have already suggested using disk usage reporting software to confirm where your usage lies ... this is also a good idea.

Hope this helps !

Salutaciones.

Rick

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Camello,

It may be easier to spot where your usage is if you use the directory view of your usage analyzer.

Rick

By 'DISPROPORTIONATELY' I mean that a system that it was initially installed, updated and configured to only get about 9.2GB in just Months came to what it has today about 20GB.

*I should not have more than perhaps 10 GB in my systems since the tool I use for Backup, Systemback, does not support copying a very large system ... and it is the only one that I can understand its use until today.

A very common "gobbler" of disk space is logging, if you are not using the logrotate utility or if it is improperly configured. Check out /var/log ...

But you also should be aware of, and should be routinely using, LVM = Logical Volume Management. (It's usually installed by default.) This important feature completely separates the phyiscal storage picture from the logical one that is seen by applications. Storage devices are added to "physical storage pools," and "logical volumes" are carved from them. If several devices share the same pool, the data is transparently distributed among them. If a pool is running out of space, simply add another device to it.

LVM's designers also anticipated other requirements, such as how to elegantly deal with the case that a particular drive "has started to make ominous clicking noises." You can withdraw the device from the pool – transparently(!) moving everything that it now contains to "somewhere else" so that you can then remove and decommission it.

I'm sorry but this is being going to become like 'Greek' to me - it seems that something I misleaded but I can not know that it was, nor where, much less as how to resolve the matter.

Thank you all for yours good intentions ...