Slow system -- Now Get "low disk space"

[drjoewebb]

My system has been quite sluggish of late, with apps taking a while to load. Using Kubuntu 8.04.1

I got an error message that my home partition only had 4% space left. Certainly this explains the behavior!

But when I got my disk info I got this

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 229G 149G 69G 69% /
varrun 503M 156K 503M 1% /var/run
varlock 503M 0 503M 0% /var/lock
udev 503M 44K 503M 1% /dev
devshm 503M 0 503M 0% /dev/shm
lrm 503M 44M 459M 9% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile

Any ideas what this might be? Should I suspect that my hard drive might be dying?

[dibl]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get "low disk space"

Is your /home directory within that / filesystem on /dev/sda1, or in some other partition?

What is the output of the

df

command?

[drjoewebb]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get "low disk space"

this is the output from df

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 239282940 166594232 60629520 74% /
varrun 514528 156 514372 1% /var/run
varlock 514528 0 514528 0% /var/lock
udev 514528 44 514484 1% /dev
devshm 514528 0 514528 0% /dev/shm
lrm 514528 45040 469488 9% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb1 61724 5039 56685 9% /media/disk

[dibl]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get "low disk space"

Hmmmmm. Something's not quite adding up here.

Let's have a look at the file /etc/fstab. You can get it quickly by entering

cat /etc/fstab

in the Konsole and then copy and paste it into a reply.

[drjoewebb]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get "low disk space"

this is the result

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=c7709eb9-5cfc-471c-8038-27fc718c596a / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=b7fab884-72f1-4daf-9688-e4a02aa8ddd4 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0


I also ran a search for large files and now I suspect I may be my own worst enemy, especially since I'm such a newbie at this. I have all of my work in folders on my Desktop. From looking at the Desktop, it's stored in /home. I wonder if I should just make a new folder somewhere else in the file system and remove all of my work there.

I have run
sudo apt-get clean, autoclean, and autoremove, with no changes to my usage.

If I do move things out of the Desktop, where should I create a new directory?

[musta ruhtinas]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

is that ALL fstab listed? because i only see the root partition and swap, which means you don't have a separate /home partition and your /home dir is located on the root partition

[drjoewebb]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

yes, it appears /home is in /root when i look at /root in file systems in dolphin

[dibl]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

Unless you have another partition on your hard drive that is accessible to Linux, there's nowhere available to move those large files -- moving them to another place in the same filesystem will not relieve the congestion problem. Your /etc/fstab file shows no other partitions.

If you could move a couple of GB of files off to a CD or something, and then re-run df we could see whether this is the source of the problem.

Another thing that I would be doing in this situation is to boot a Live CD, and use that to fsck -a your /dev/sda1 filesystem. There's no harm, and it might reveal whether there are more serious problems with that hard drive or filesystem.

[musta ruhtinas]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

multimedia files generally require more storage, so if you do have some videos, mp3's, etc., that may explain the space issue

if you have some unused space you could create a new partition and use it to store some of the files (but not the configuration files)

in the long run it would be better to actually have a separate home partition, because that will keep your customized settings after a reinstall

[drjoewebb]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

i consulted with my in-house i.t. expert (a teenager) and we suspect that with my dislike of the amd64 version of kubuntu that re-installing with the 32 version and partitioning at the same time (after i backup all of my work) may be the cleanest and most satisfying way to do this.

with the 233gb usable, how large should the kubuntu partition be? the rest of the hard drive, of course, would be for my work.

all advice appreciated....

jww

[dibl]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

Just the OS itself and a couple dozen packages will use about 4 - 5GB. So if you plan to put all your data on some other partition, linked to your /home directory perhaps, or else by mounting /home on a separate partition, then a 6GB or 7GB partition is sufficient.

[klerfayt]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

...I got an error message that my home partition only had 4% space left...

so Kubuntu has something similar to Windows? Can I see the screenshot of that message somewhere?

[drjoewebb]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

sorry, a screen shot was the last thing on my mind when i saw that

as this soap opera has unfolded, btw, i did find the source of my problem, and i did not reinstall. i am a heavy user of audacity, and i had about 20,000 *.au files on my system ranging from 0.8-1.2mb each. they have all been backed up and now deleted from my system.

now the system is fast again

[dibl]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I have 91,000 music files, most of which are also Audacity files. But they're not in my /home directory -- they are on another hard drive. I guess that's a good thing! Thanks for the report!

[drjoewebb]

Re: Slow system -- Now Get &quot;low disk space&quot;

yeah, that second hard drive is looking like a good idea for me now too

everyone was telling me to look for some really big files, but unless you know audacity, you'd never suspect it as the culprit... i didn't, and then when i just happened to be doing something else in my file manager, i realized it.

so now after i do a project, i'll be saving a .wav and my .mp3, and then deleting the .au's or backing them up elsewhere