The / partition full?

[werdigo49]

Trying to download some new software, I'm getting a report that /tmp has no more free space. Checking /tmp shows it is only 1M and that my / partition (18.9G) is also full. (My /home partition is 250G, 93% free).

Can anyone suggest why the / partition is full, and what I can do about it? I have Firefox set to download to /home but the software download is directly from the LibreOffice site.

[claydoh]

If you have installed a lot of software, or run multiple desktops in addition to Plasma your root dir can get full very fast with "only" 19gb. Packages are downloaded and installed to /.

You can regain some space by removing packages and kernels that are no longer needed or used with "sudo apt autoremove" and you can clear your package cache with "sudo apt-get clean".

This should let you install updates or new software but unless you uninstall things you'll likely hit the wall again soon so making a larger root dir will be worth it at some point.

sent from my LG V10 using Tapatalk

[Snowhog]

The other thing that can/does use up roots (/) filesystem space are kernels. Usually one whats to have two installed kernels; current (the one you likely/mostly are booting from) and the first prior (kept, generally, as a 'life boat' in case something happens that prevents booting from the current kernel).

Installed kernels and their associated entourage of required support elements) take up a fair amount of disk space, and having more than two installed kernels on a small-ish root partition impacts on the remaining space available for package downloads/de-compression/installation when running apt/apt-get operations.

[werdigo49]

I just finished an apt-get purge of many kernel image files (after checking to see that I am currently using one numbered 87). Cleared about 2G of space on that / partition. But now my Trusty won't boot. There's just a few lines of junk (white rectangles, etc.) I did save 87 and about 4 immediately-prior ones; those deleted started with numbers around 30!

I had been following a "can't boot" thread on the Ubuntu forum. As the old saying goes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

This is being posted from the Windows 8.1 partition on this laptop, using IE. Is my Trusty salvageable?

EDIT/UPDATE: I decided to use this opportunity to move to Kubuntu 16.04. The Plasma desktop is booting fine. I have been unable to get some of my old financial software to run but am still working on that.