running out of disk space on root partition

@op · 2011-07-26 19:47:26

Hello,

I'm running gnome 3 and every time I boot and logon with my user I'm getting a warning that my root partition is running out of disk space (~350MB free out of 7.5GB). This seems really strange to me since I've not installed very much software. I've got a 1TB hard drive and the big things are stored in my home directory.

# df -h

outputs:

Filesystem                                             size    used   free  used%   mounted
udev                                                     10M       0   10M    0% /dev
run                                                      10M    168K  9,9M    2% /run
/dev/disk/by-uuid/072ba75b-a418-4795-ac0b-965815573010  7,3G    6,6G  357M   95% /
shm                                                     2,0G    444K  2,0G    1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1                                                99M     17M   78M   18% /boot
/dev/sda4                                               910G    131G  733G   16% /home

/dev/disk/by-uuid/072ba75b-a418-4795-ac0b-965815573010 seems a little bit odd to me there although I don't have much experience using linux based systems.

# ls /dev/disk/by-uuid/072ba75b-a418-4795-ac0b-965815573010 -l
# lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10  (...date and time ...)  /dev/disk/by-uuid/072ba75b-a418-4795-ac0b-965815573010 -> ../../sda3

and tab completion lists the files of my home directory. What's going on here?

graysky · 2011-07-26 19:50:08

Install ncdu and run it as root to see where the bloat is located:

# ncdu -x /

Install bleachbit from the AUR and run this as root (I do this after a system update):

# bleachbit --delete system.cache system.localizations system.trash system.tmp

You can even add this to your ~/.bashrc as an alias if you give yourself sudo rights to /usr/bin/bleachbit

$ grep bb ~/.bashrc
alias bb="sudo bleachbit --delete system.cache system.localizations system.trash system.tmp"

Install cacheclean from the AUR and do likewise:

$ grep cc ~/.bashrc
alias cc="sudo cacheclean 2"

Last edited by graysky (2011-07-26 19:50:56)

Ashren · 2011-07-26 19:55:02

To see what's eating space (in mbs):

du -md1 / | sort -n

It's probably your pacman cache. To clean it:

pacman -Scc

@op · 2011-07-26 19:59:19

Since I've never installed anything from AUR I tried

pacman -Scc

and instantly ~3GB were deleted from /var - problem solved. The other ~3GB are used in /usr, that's fine I guess.
Thank's to you guys!

graysky · 2011-07-26 20:01:04

@op - cacheclean is better....

@op · 2011-07-26 20:02:38

I'll try cacheclean too! have to install yaourt first

Inxsible · 2011-07-26 20:07:54

also make sure you have logrotate installed. I have seen a bunch of threads where the the op had issues with space on / partition, only to find out that their log files are 4GB+ sizes.

@op · 2011-07-26 20:16:51

logrotate is already installed, thank you for the remark

jamesbond007 · 2011-07-26 21:45:35

@op: If you want to avoid this problem in the future without rearranging your partitions, one way is to move pacmans cache directory somewhere else by letting point the "CacheDir" parameter in /etc/pacman.conf to a directory on another partition.

Ashren · 2011-07-26 22:22:10

@op: The best practice IMO would be repartition your disk so that at least /usr and /var got their own separate partition.

graysky · 2011-07-26 22:23:07

+1 for placing /var on its own partition.

ChoK · 2011-07-27 19:38:44

/usr should not be on a seperate partition anymore. Some programs assume it's on the same partition and fail sometime silently sometime badly.

Inxsible · 2011-07-27 19:58:49

ChoK wrote:

/usr should not be on a seperate partition anymore. Some programs assume it's on the same partition and fail sometime silently sometime badly.

What ?? That's the first I have heard of this. What programs fail? Any examples?

falconindy · 2011-07-27 20:47:46

Inxsible wrote:

ChoK wrote:
/usr should not be on a seperate partition anymore. Some programs assume it's on the same partition and fail sometime silently sometime badly.
What ?? That's the first I have heard of this. What programs fail? Any examples?

With sysvinit in Arch, this isn't such a big problem, but we're slowly starting to see evidence that this is becoming a worse and worse idea. In particular, if you set a non C locale for daemons, you will not be able to shut down cleanly, as mount(8) is trying to reference files in the locale cache (on /usr) and can't unmount /usr.

Example bug report: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/25149

If you're using systemd, /usr on a separate partition is flat out not allowed. We're getting into the realm of filthy hacks ahead in order to try and support this -- see Tom's late comments in the above bug report.

Oh, and be on the lookout for a cache cleaning util in pacman-contrib (name pending):

http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 13926.html

Last edited by falconindy (2011-07-27 20:48:14)

Inxsible · 2011-07-27 20:52:39

Thanks Dave. I'll probably have to look into the actual philosophy of it. See how it figures out that /usr is on a separate partition. (UUID checking maybe).

I don't have a separate /usr, but I might just try a new install in virtualbox with a separate /usr to see what happens.

Gives me something to read tonight.

Ashren · 2011-07-27 21:24:00

falconindy: That's sad. It gives the user less control and it increases the risk for a full / partition. I think I'll use the dirty hacks. The thought of extending my / logical volume when I need to install extra software just doesn't feel right.

gee · 2011-09-10 06:25:24

graysky wrote:

$ grep bb ~/.bashrc
alias bb="sudo bleachbit --delete system.cache system.localizations system.trash system.tmp"

Sorry for getting back to this old thread, but I have actually tried this one without looking too much into it and it killed most of the files in a partition I had mounted in /tmp...
I had a full backup so I don't care, but I thought I'd mention it for someone who might not.

(Or maybe I should just not mount stuff in tmp in the first place).

BabyDoc · 2011-09-10 09:08:09

gee wrote:

graysky wrote:
$ grep bb ~/.bashrc
alias bb="sudo bleachbit --delete system.cache system.localizations system.trash system.tmp"
Sorry for getting back to this old thread, but I have actually tried this one without looking too much into it and it killed most of the files in a partition I had mounted in /tmp...
I had a full backup so I don't care, but I thought I'd mention it for someone who might not.
(Or maybe I should just not mount stuff in tmp in the first place).

I would think someone who uses Arch has the common sense to check what a command does, before executing it. Certainly if posted on a public such forum as this one. Executing stuff without knowing what it will do is a very bad practice. (I do not mean to insult/offend you in any way, I just have seen more people behaving this way and I don't understand why really.)

And mounting stuff in /tmp does not seem the best idea to me. As far as I know this is not the purpose of the /tmp directory.

GSF1200S · 2011-09-10 22:52:08

I would really suggest having the Downgrade package installed from the AUR if you are going to make a habit of running pacman -Scc to keep space clear on /. pacman -Scc cleans pacman's entire package cache- if you upgrade and something breaks, you will have no local package on the system to downgrade to. With the Downgrade script from the AUR, assuming you have a network connection still, you can at least grab the offending package from the ARM and get back online. I would suggest, once you know everything is working well, running pacman -Sc instead, which clears all packages from cache except the versions matching the ones you currently have installed.

It is mentioned even in the wiki that pacman -Scc is bad practice, and I agree as this is a rolling-release distro- we never know when an upstream bug is going to bite us somewhere. If you have a massive /home partition, I would suggest you have pacman cache packages there. Otherwise, stick to pacman -Sc and have Downgrade installed. Good luck and no offense to the advice of prior posters..

Last edited by GSF1200S (2011-09-10 22:52:30)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-26 19:47:26

running out of disk space on root partition

#2 2011-07-26 19:50:08

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#3 2011-07-26 19:55:02

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#4 2011-07-26 19:59:19

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#5 2011-07-26 20:01:04

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#6 2011-07-26 20:02:38

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#7 2011-07-26 20:07:54

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#8 2011-07-26 20:16:51

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#9 2011-07-26 21:45:35

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#10 2011-07-26 22:22:10

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#11 2011-07-26 22:23:07

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#12 2011-07-27 19:38:44

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#13 2011-07-27 19:58:49

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#14 2011-07-27 20:47:46

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#15 2011-07-27 20:52:39

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#16 2011-07-27 21:24:00

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#17 2011-09-10 06:25:24

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#18 2011-09-10 09:08:09

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

#19 2011-09-10 22:52:08

Re: running out of disk space on root partition

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