{SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

Vaeth · 2022-08-15 00:02:56

First time dealing with encryption in Arch, decided to set it up with the arch installer to encrypt my disk. I feel like something was setup incorrectly because my SSD should have 2TB of storage? I'm also not sure if the solution is just to somehow increase the size of the encrypted parition because wouldn't it slow down my startup to have to decrypt more? Like I would think if we merge nvme0n1p3 with nvme0n1p2 it would take 90x the amount of time to decrypt 90x the amount of blocks of data

lsblk:

NAME         MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS
zram0        253:0    0    4G  0 disk  [SWAP]
nvme0n1      259:0    0  1.8T  0 disk  
├─nvme0n1p1  259:1    0  511M  0 part  /boot
├─nvme0n1p2  259:2    0 19.5G  0 part  
│ └─cryptlvm 254:0    0 19.5G  0 crypt /
└─nvme0n1p3  259:3    0  1.8T  0 part  /home

Should I be concerned about disk partition setup?

Last edited by Vaeth (2022-08-17 05:44:29)

frostschutz · 2022-08-15 00:24:40

Well, /home is not encrypted and although / device is named cryptlvm, it does not look like LVM either. Time to go back to the drawing board...?

Trilby · 2022-08-15 00:26:36

How / why is your root filesystem nearing 20GB? 20GB is far more than enough for most use-cases. If you don't immediately know exactly what is taking up all that space, there is most likely a problem that you need to fix. Allotting more space for the problem to fill up is not a solution.

See a related discussion (on what's using up space) with diagnostic / troubleshooting steps here.

Last edited by Trilby (2022-08-15 00:29:01)

Vaeth · 2022-08-15 01:15:12

How / why is your root filesystem nearing 20GB? 20GB is far more than enough for most use-cases. If you don't immediately know exactly what is taking up all that space, there is most likely a problem that you need to fix. Allotting more space for the problem to fill up is not a solution.

Nothing seems out of the ordinary. my lib folder takes up 11.2G but it;s full of apps I recognize. The largest folder is the golang files at ~500MB. the rest of the contents just look likes dependencies, probably pulled in from pacman.

Whilst another 6G are tarballs stored in pacman's cache.

I don't see anything here that seems like it doesn't belong. Go/C#/Python/Java, Slack, Dolphin/RetroArch, VirtualBox, Chrome/Firefox, Steam, OBS, etc. just add up after a while, which shouldn't be a problem anyway since I installed a 2TB SSD. The issue is it looks like the arch installer partitioned my files such that I may not have access to 1.8TB of that storage

PerfMonk · 2022-08-15 01:35:04

Time to clean the journal files and temporary files ?
https://www.debugpoint.com/systemd-journald-clean/

Note that your /boot and /home are not encrypted. You are using zram but no physical swap so hibernation is not possible.
I always give 100G for the root partition since I hate it when I have to resize one partition : shrink this, grow that ... It's a waste of time and it can get complicated with encryption/lvm/filesystems.
My root use actually 52G but I didn't have to resize it since I have grown it at 100G.

You have a quite big disk since /home use 1.8TB, why not have more space on root since it's a pain when it gets full ???

Your choice

Vaeth · 2022-08-15 01:39:33

You have a quite big disk since /home use 1.8TB, why not have more space on root since it's a pain when it gets full ???

Well, as I stated, I was using the arch installer they had recently included, so I guess most of these configurations are the default for that.

I guess my concern here was if the 1.8TB is not accessible, then what can I do to resize these partitions if that's the only way, and if the encryption isn't doing anything useful anyway, then maybe I want to just remove it as well, and how I do that.

PerfMonk · 2022-08-17 01:26:34

First : backup !

Be sure to have everything you want to keep backuped.

Personally I have a laptop and encryption is not an option. If my laptop is stolen no data would be accessible to anybody.
You should reinstall with encryption (LUKS) and use LVM to allocate a root, home, swap partition all on the luks encrypted container (and dont forget EFI partition first).

Then restore your personal data previously taken in backup, reinstall programs you installed post installation, tweek the config at your taste and you're done.

There is lot of documentation on how to install. I suggest you read on the excellent arch wiki it will help you.
Also read this : Arch Linux Full-Disk Encryption Installation Guide

good luck!

Vaeth · 2022-08-17 05:36:50

Unfortunately, I did end up losing the /home partition while trying to shift its starting point using parted, as well as the instructions in the ArchWiki for removing the LUKS2 encryption were poorly documented and I was not able to find my LVM group using the commands (as well as having no prior knowledge of the setup since it was automated by the archinstaller). I figured I had to parted first because the instructions for Backup-Format-Restore said I needed "enough space to store a backup," which with no mention of using an external storage such as a SSD, I assumed it meant this had to be done on the system itself. It was only shortly after I had removed and remade the partition as well as resized the filesystem that I had found that the team had removed move from the later versions of parted and to use GParted instead (as well as the Live bootable disc provided for GParted). After having to run e2fsck, my /home directory was empty. Of course, I had a backup, but it'd seem I made the backup after already trying to run parted (and before attempting to remove LUKS2 from my system), so it was too little too late

But going back through the installation process a second time, I do have a few takeaways:

Do not use the suggested partition table from archinstall. That is where the problem started. root partition was only allocated 20GB, which I hadn't realized at the time would be insufficient for all the programs I would come to use. Instead, the archinstall allows you to manually configure your partition table. Using the suggested partition table is still possible, but I would recommend the other points below then.
Do NOT use the encryption option in archinstall. It will setup LUKS2 which is poorly documented and not compatible with the cryptsetup-reencrypt module to help with decryption for LUKS1. You will also have no clue as to what your encrypted file structure looks like in order to do the safest process of Backup-Format-Restore documented in the ArchWiki
Do not use parted. Removing the move operation from the CLI is a head scratcher when GParted still uses it, but as a result you should use GParted as well as the provided Live iso provided for making a Live CD/USB to boot into and use GParted. This is how I was able to resize my root partition to 100GB

Here is a link to the GParted article on setting up the Live USB.

I'll also mark this as solved, as I did find a solution for resizing your partitions and how to remove the encryption

Arch Linux

#1 2022-08-15 00:02:56

{SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

#2 2022-08-15 00:24:40

Re: {SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

#3 2022-08-15 00:26:36

Re: {SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

#4 2022-08-15 01:15:12

Re: {SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

#5 2022-08-15 01:35:04

Re: {SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

#6 2022-08-15 01:39:33

Re: {SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

#7 2022-08-17 01:26:34

Re: {SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

#8 2022-08-17 05:36:50

Re: {SOLVED] File System root is almost full on at 20G encrypted partition

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