Disk space full, and can't remove files because it's full?
First off, Hello. This is my first post. I'm trying to learn Linux. I started with slackware64 14.1. I installed it and have been using it just fine for weeks. Now today, I put in a HDD, all good. Now I try to delete some files from it, well trash gets full. I open trash and delete it from there. Somewhere along the way desktop crashes, and most commands won't work. It keeps saying disk space full. Even remove commands.
I'm at a loss. I just don't known Linux well enough yet to troubleshoot it, I don't even know how to phrase the problem well enough to find a solution for my system. As for the system. It's slackware 14.1 x64. Installed on a 120G SSD. Split into two partitions /dev/sda1 is just a small boot partition, the rest is an extended partition with 3 lvm luks encrypted partitions. I checked disk usage and everything has space. I tried checking inodes, but from what I read, being encrypted can make that read zero. |
If you try to delete too many files at a time - the disk may be used to hold the names. Just start with the biggest files you want/need to delete and delete them one at a time. As you release space, you can start to select more files ...
Oh - I wouldn't use the desktop to do it - use the console command line. |
Depending on your partition layout, you could just remove everything in the /tmp/ directory. None of that is required for a properly running system.
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rm -rf /tmp/* If you need to find out what's taking all your space, you can use the handy command below. Then once you find a large directory you'd like more info on, you can change into that directory and run the command again until you find some stuff you can delete. Code:
du -hd 1 | sort -h |
It actually ended up being btrfs. It was working fine for a while, so I forgot that could be an issue. I still couldn't get the workarounds to fix it though. So I went back to ext4. I'll play around with btrfs on a separate drive, vm, or something another time.
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The reference to Trash sounds like a GUI tool at work. Are you able to delete files from the command line ? Quote:
And now I need to study up on LUKS and inode counts ... IMO, it would be a nasty regression if LUKS hides or mis-reports inode counts ! Thanks for the info. -- kjh |
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The problem sounds like too much GUI. That doesn't delete things very well - as it actually does a "mv src trash" type thing, which can require an expansion of the trash directory, if not a full copy of the file. Using the command line "rm" will delete files, and with a minimum (to no) overhead. |
When your disk is full I don't recommend using rm. That only deletes the pointer to the file but the data may still be on disk. It's best to find a big file, like a large log, and empty it out.
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root@hades:~ # df -h |
Interesting Gerardo Zamudio ...
Never thought of doing it that-a-way but next time I run into a full file system, I'll certainly do it your way ( :) if I remember :) ) Off topic, but I have to ask ... ( Your log entries beg the question ), why are the libvirt logs so huge ? -- kjh |
Eh, some sort of constant polling I guess.
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root@hades:/var/log/libvirt # tail -f libvirtd.log |
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When a file is NOT deleted, there are still pointers to the file. |
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But I will admit, I'm not familiar with btrfs or other similar setups, so it could be completely different there compared to normal HDD or SSD operations. |
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But it is still true that the file isn't "deleted" by simply removing the pointers. It only occurs on SSDs when trim is used, and on HDDs you need to manually do it, since there isn't something in place to do it (since there's really no need unless you need to securely remove the file).
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removing the pointers is all the filesystem needs. That is ALL that is needed.
The "trim" is only required by the device, and since it is a device activity, guess what - the filesystem has to do it. If the filesystem doesn't support the trim, guess what - you can't do it at all. "manually do it" is called "writing data". Might be zeros, might not, but writing data is your activity. |
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