Arch Linux

keizer

Member

Registered: 2009-08-29

Posts: 10

EXT4 wrong free space problem?

Hello,

When starting gnome its starts nagging that there is no free space left (both as root and normal user). When I run the Disk Usage Analyzer, is states that "Total filesystem capacity: 63.7GB (used: 32. GB available: 35. 1 GB)". However, graphically the "/" bar indicates 100% in red. GParted report the correct free space. I'm using the ext4 filesystem. Could this be the cause of the problem or is this a gnome problem? I ran fsck -fyv on the unmounted filesystem but this had no effect. Even deletion of files does not free up any space, gnome keeps saying at startup that there is no free space left. Has anybody experienced  a similar problem?

I hope somebody can help me!

jongkind

Member

Registered: 2009-11-28

Posts: 15

Re: EXT4 wrong free space problem?

The size of "/" indicates the disk-space that is occupied by files in root, its subfolders, and its mounted partitions. This is per definition 100%, so I don't expect that this is the cause of your problem.

Nevertheless, a friend of my experienced the same problems with GNOME and the lack of free space. We couldn't find what occupied so much space, especially because there was a discrepancy between what Disk Usage Analyzer reported and what gnome-system-monitor reported. We ended up in reinstalling his system, which is still bothering me, since I still do not understand what caused his problems.

He used Simple Backup as tool, and I suspect that his problems were related to that, but I could not find solid proof for this. Do use such a backup tool also?

So unfortunately, I'm not of great help, but I'm interested in whether you find a solution, so keep us posted.

grtz, Herman

keizer

Member

Registered: 2009-08-29

Posts: 10

Re: EXT4 wrong free space problem?

Hi Herman,
I figured out what my problem was. After running gdmap I noticed that the cache of pacman was filling up disk space. For some reason this isn't shown when using the Disk Usage Analyzer. Execution of pacmac -Scc solved the problem. It had nothing to do with ext4....
Greetings,
Joris

fluffylime

Member

From: Russia, Moscow

Registered: 2009-04-03

Posts: 47

Re: EXT4 wrong free space problem?

Try using ncdu - it can report both apparent size and disk usage (press 'a' key). It helped me to find space-eaters: plasma cache and partially dowloaded files. Disk space was allocated, but there was no actual data. (4kb cache file occupied 120mb on disk).

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English is not my native language, sorry.

jongkind

Member

Registered: 2009-11-28

Posts: 15

Re: EXT4 wrong free space problem?

Fluffylime, this tool works great, thanks.

Joris, good to know that you solved it, thanks for the feedback.