[Solved] home partition shown as full, but is not!

[Chopstick]

Hi Folks,
I have a really weird problem: suddenly, for no apparent reason, kubuntu thinks my home partition is full... but it is clearly not.

df -hTxtmpfs
Filesystem  Type  Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1   ext3   14G  13G 218M 99% /
/dev/sda6   ext3   75G  71G  32M 100% /home

This appeared rather suddenly; a daemon popped up and notified me that disk space was low. Then I deleted some files (~4GB, so initially it probably was pretty much full). But the available disk space did not change... I rebooted, but still no change.

I'm totally lost on this one, I have absolutely no idea what to do. And it's pretty annoying - I can do nothing that involves writing to the hard disk...

I notice that there is fairly little space left on my root partition, but I don't really know what I can do about that... there is nothing I could easily uninstall. I already tried 'auto clean' and 'clean'.

Thanks,
Chopstick

[eddieg780]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

Hi. Did you put the deleted files in the trash bin or delete them by using shift delete. Maybe the files are in your recycle bin and there for your drive is still full.

[Chopstick]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

no, I deleted them - the trash bin is empty. At least it is show to be empty... and I usually display hidden files.

It's not that simple ;-)

[eddieg780]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

I deleted about 10 gb from my hd last month and it didn't free up the space. I restarted my machine and at the grub menu I hit the esc key and chose recovery and then at the recovery menu I chose fsck to check my drive and it found many errors, it repaired them and I had my free space back. Maybe yours is doing the same.

[josefko]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

I don't know if this is the case, but I deleted a file once as a root and than it was still in the trash of the user root, which is different from the trash of the current user and the desktop trash icon shows nothing. The trash of the user root is in the folder /root/....

[Qqmike]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

Get the package called
sweeper
and run it, see if that helps.

Fwiw, I put a checklist of things to check manually for cleanup here:
-- Privacy Cleanup 101
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde....msg115011#new
Reply #5: kcontrol Reply #8: How to Delete Data
Reply #10: Update/Summary for Intrepid Ibex KDE4

What the guys have said about Trash is often the case, too.
Hidden files?
Compact your email? Too much junk email?

Some applications can surprise you. For example, running PhotoRec or TestDisk, they generate folders contains TONS of files very quickly.


Commands
Play with the ls command
man ls
For example,
ls -alSR
gives a heck of a listing of your files and sizes. There may be easier/better choices, I'm not awake yet here, ... Anyone have a suggestion for him?

[josefko]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

There may be easier/better choices, I'm not awake yet here, ... Anyone have a suggestion for him?

Yesterday there was a thread about how to see disk space
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3105965.0

[Nate]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

Filelight is a good visual presentation of your disk usage.

[skunk]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

Another way to see a graphical representation of disk space usage is to open the folder using Konqueror and then select View -> View Mode -> File Size View

If you experience problems opening the folder, try Settings -> Load View Profile -> File Management

[Chopstick]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

@eddieg780: I tried to use fsck on boot; the root partition was checked and ok, with the home partition I got a warning saying that checking a mounted file system may cause major damage, so I aborted... what can I do there? Why is home mounted and not root?

@josefko: where is the garbage bin? i.e. what is the folder? I can't even see it in my home folder?

@qqmikw: sweeper did not help anything (I already clean that up anyway, I guess). It's not my email either.

The point is that the 4GB I freed up do not appear as available.
I recently deleted some more and this time it worked. Now it is this:

df -hTxtmpfs
Filesystem  Type  Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1   ext3   14G  13G 242M 99% /
/dev/sda6   ext3   75G  69G 1.7G 98% /home

Btw. I noticed there is a .kde-folder owned by root in my root dir "/"
I already read the Dolphin-Disk-Space? thread, but I will look into this privacy cleanup 101.

Thanks for all the help guys!

At the moment the trash-bin of root and fcsk on my home partition seem like the most promising. Can anyone tell me how to do these? I.e. where is the trash folder and how can I check a mounted partition?

[josefko]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

where is the garbage bin? i.e. what is the folder? I can't even see it in my home folder?

The trash of current user is in the folder /home/current_user/.local/share/Trash/files. Because the folder .local is hidden, you must switch for example in Dolphin Menu -> View -> Show hidden files

The user root trash is in the folder /root/.local/share/Trash/files. The same problem with hidden .local and more - you must open /root/.local folder as a root. For getting there you have to start Dolphin from the shell with command

kdesudo dolphin

and delete files with SHIFT+DEL.

how can I check a mounted partition?

For doing fsck you have to boot into recovery mode (the second line from boot menu) and choose fsck from the menu there. You can't check a mounted partition.

[Qqmike]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

For more on checking/fixing a filesystem, checkout what herman says:
http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eherman546/p10.html
(scroll down through the table of contents until you see filesystem check)

[russlar]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

/dev/sda6   ext3   75G  69G 1.7G 98% /home

In case you were wondering, df shows only 1.7G free when 69G used because ext3 reserves 5% of total capacity by default for the root user, in case you fill it up and need to go in as root and clean it up. To free up that space, use sudo tune2fs -m 1. This will turn down the reservation to 1%, which is the lowest I recommend going.

[Chopstick]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

@ Josefko: kdesudo dolphin causes the following error: cannot talk to klauncher.
As for the partition check: it is at boot that I get this warning. I did exactly what you say, but I still get the warning that my home partition is mounted... root is being checked alright.

So the problem is, I deleted ~4GB but the available space did not change! There were 4GB of movies which are gone now, but my available disk space did not increase!!! I deleted nother 1.5GB or so, and these show up as available (see above)

[josefko]

Re: home partition shown as full, but is not!

As for the partition check

Maybe other guys would have better idea, I would try fsck for /home from live CD.

kdesudo dolphin causes the following error

I do not understand, I tried it myself before I posted it and I deleted one file from my root trash with it now. Must be dolphin, not Dolphin, I misspelled it. I personally use Krusader for root operations. But you need root access only for /root folder and as you wrote, your main problem was in /home where you have write permission as a current user.