[SOLVED] "No space left on device" but supposedly I have about 5GB available

sombragris · 04-25-2018, 08:11 AM

I have a separate /home partition.

Lately I began to get all kinds of "low disk space" alerts.

Today I got the same and bash began complaining about "No space left on device". But I had supposedly 3 GB available (according to filelight and also confirmed via df -h).

I moved a multi-gigabyte file out of the partition to no avail.

I use -current (64-bit) with AlienBob's Plasma 5 packages, in case this helps.

Can anyone help me locate the cause of this problem? Thanks in advance.

yancek · 04-25-2018, 08:24 AM

You need 5% for the system. If you have a 20GB drive, having 3GB available would be OK. It it's a 1TB drive, not. What's the output of df -h? What's filling up, your /home partition or /?

sombragris · 04-25-2018, 08:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yancek

You need 5% for the system. If you have a 20GB drive, having 3GB available would be OK. It it's a 1TB drive, not. What's the output of df -h? What's filling up, your /home partition or /?

The size of the physical drive is 256 GB (SSD).

The size of the partition is 47 GB. So, based on your parameters, I think I got plenty.

As for df -h output:

Code:

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs            32M  1.3M   31M   4% /run
devtmpfs        8.0M     0  8.0M   0% /dev
/dev/sda6        50G   47G  916K 100% /
tmpfs           5.9G   64M  5.8G   2% /dev/shm
cgroup_root     8.0M     0  8.0M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda7        48G   28G   18G  61% /home
/dev/sda2        96M   69M   28M  72% /boot/efi

Half of the SSD is occupied by a Windows partition which at this time is not mounted.

Darth Vader · 04-25-2018, 09:04 AM

While the system/root reserved is really useful on / (root) partition, maybe you will want to use at max your space within the /home partition.

IF you use EXT4, you have a way to remove this limitation:

Code:

tune2fs -r 0 /dev/sda7

To note that this command require a reboot or an umount/mount before to enjoy all your space as user.

I have the habit to use a similar command on any non-system partition, where I want any user to have full access to all space.

BTW, removing the reserved space has negative effects over the filesystem fragmentation. Not that this is so important for a SSD, but to take note about this misfeature.

elcore · 04-25-2018, 09:06 AM

I could bet the /tmp directory on sda6 is the cause of your problem.

Darth Vader · 04-25-2018, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elcore

I could bet the /tmp directory on sda6 is the cause of your problem.

Yeah, also his root partition looks full.

sombragris · 04-25-2018, 09:12 AM

I removed an old compilation directory from my root partition and cleaned the /tmp directory and now the problem seems to be gone. Thanks to all involved but I'll keep a close eye on my partitions.
Marking thread as solved (hopefully).

yancek · 04-25-2018, 12:35 PM

I'd say the / partition looks full with less than 1MB available on a 50GB partition. I don't know what you are using the machine for but I've had systems installed for years and updated and never got to 15GB. Definitely something to keep an eye and at least now you know the source of the problem and how to treat it.

volkerdi · 04-25-2018, 12:42 PM

If you have many small files, it could be that you've run out of inodes rather than out of free space.

To check:

df -i