Arch Linux

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

[Solved] Root partition disk space usage increases 1.2GB in 6 months?

I keep a general log of changes to my system. Some 6 months ago my root partition was 4.6GB in size. I have only today noticed that it is now up to 5.8GB, for no specific reason as I have only added one package that is an additional 70MB installed size.

(My /home has its own distinct partition).

Here is what I have done so far to try to determine what is taking up this extra space:

1) cleaned the pacman cache with -Scc
2) removed all orphan packages
3) checked all "explicit" packages and removed ones I no longer use with -Rns
3) ran "lostfiles" and cleaned those up
4) checked the pacman log for the last 6 months to see if any large packages were installed - no!
5) created a sorted list of installed package sizes and checked all those over 5MB in size but don't notice anything unusual.

The only conclusion I can arrive at is that my base Arch install package sizes have all increased significantly over the past half year. It's not something I'm really going to worry about but if anyone can suggest other ways I can attempt to find out what is taking up the extra space I would appreciate it.

Last edited by lagagnon (2015-12-02 01:10:46)

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Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

ratcheer

Member

Registered: 2011-10-09

Posts: 912

Re: [Solved] Root partition disk space usage increases 1.2GB in 6 months?

I am experiencing something similar. My root fs was using 12 GB. I found that the pacman cache was using over 8 of it. So, I cleaned the cache and it reported that it cleared 5 GB of stuff. But, my root fs is still taking up 12 GB. It is like I still need to do something else to actually free the storage. Color me confused.

Tim

ratcheer

Member

Registered: 2011-10-09

Posts: 912

Re: [Solved] Root partition disk space usage increases 1.2GB in 6 months?

Well, never mind. Now, my root fs is down to 6.3 GB used. That must be the final result of the pacman cache cleaning, but it sure took a long time to show up. Now I'm really confused.

Tim

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [Solved] Root partition disk space usage increases 1.2GB in 6 months?

Use e.g. ncdu or another tool mentioned in the wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … ge_display

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: [Solved] Root partition disk space usage increases 1.2GB in 6 months?

karol: thanks for the pointer to that wonderful utility. I did try "du -kh" on most directories, but "ncdu" makes it more obvious. Found the culprits as very large core dumps in /var/lib/systemd/coredump. Was having video driver issues and that caused the dumps. Have now solved those issues so have now sent coredumps to /dev/null using a file in /etc/sysctl.d .

Thanks again - I have my disk space back and a better "du" utility.

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Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.