Boot disk Full after upgrade - Can no longer boot Kubuntu 14.04 LTS

[phduval]

Been using 12.04 (or 12.10) for a long time without any problems on dual-boot Intel SSD 330 Series 240 GB, in my HP G71-351CA, 4GB RAM laptop. Decided to do a fresh install of 14.04 LTS on a Kingston SSDNow 300 "V" 240 GB, 14.04 LTS being the only OS on that SSD. Installed the same pieces of software I've been using with 12.04. Everything worked well for several months until an update, 2 or 3 months ago. Then, after that update, I wasn't able to boot anymore, never getting to the logon screen to type in my password. Fortunately, I had kept my Intell SSD intact and was able to get up and running again. I eventually checked the Kingston SSD with the 14.04 install and discovered that it was full!!! No room for anything, not even the SWAP partition!!! No wonder it wouldn't boot...

Questions:

1- Does anyone know why and/or how that problem happened?

2- If it was a known problem, was it fixed?

3- I'm looking into doing a fresh install of 15.04. Should I be concerned of maybe getting the same problem?

Thanks.

[Snowhog]

Almost certainly due to you not cleaning up the downloaded packages after updates.

You'll need to boot into Single User (Recovery) mode from the Grub menu, and after logging in, remove the downloaded packages:
apt-get --purge autoremove && sudo apt-get clean
You may also have a large number of kernels installed, which will need to be dealt with also. But, after the package clean up, reboot:
shutdown -r now
You should be able to boot normally now.

[phduval]

Correction: I am getting the Login screen but after typing my password and pressing the Enter key, the screen stays on the Kubuntu background. All I get are repetitive and very short disk accesses indicated by the HDD light going on and off. I've waited for a long time to eventualy switch my laptop off.

In Recovery Mode, I wasn't able to Login as I was not prompted to do so. I was able to run "apt-get --purge autoremove" command, but not the "sudo apt-get clean" part, getting error messages having to do with the sudo command (not logged in, and never prompted for my password). I did a Clean from the Recovery Menu. I then rebooted with the same results.

As for the kernels, I had 3.13.0-45-generic and 3.13.0-44-generic before the Clean. Now, only 3.13.0-45-generic is left in the Grub menu.

Prior to Kubuntu 14.04, I was running Kubuntu 12.04 (or 12.10) on a 75GB partition of a dualboot disk, with just over 40GB of free space on that same partition. All my data reside on another HDD. I installed the same applications on 14.04 as I had on 12.04/12.10, so I can't understand what filled my 240GB SSD drive. I checked the system-summary in the Recovery Menu and it still reports 100% utilization.

[SteveRiley]

The command du -h -d 1 will show the total size of each directory. Run this on the root of the full drive to begin finding where the culprit might be. du -h -d 2 displays one level deep into each subdirectory. Increase the number to increase the depth.

[SeijiSensei]

I was able to run "apt-get --purge autoremove" command, but not the "sudo apt-get clean" part, getting error messages having to do with the sudo command (not logged in, and never prompted for my password).

In the recovery console you are working as the root user. You don't need sudo and will get the error you report if you use it. Also the root filesystem is mounted read-only to begin with, so you need to run the command

mount -o remount,rw /

or your changes will not be saved. (Notice there is no space in the options list.)

I posted some extensive methods for cleaning out /boot over on ubuntuforums.org.

The introduction of the installation options for full disk encryption and LVM is a likely culprit. See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2278674 for details. Both of those options require a separate /boot partition, and the default 256M is not large enough unless people are vigilant about using autoremove. This problem seems to have gotten worse on 15.04.