Disk Space Issues - is 40GB too small?

[brian9000]

Hi everyone. I'm on my first attempt at using kubuntu. I took a spare Dell box I had (GX280) with a 40g HD and installed directly off a kubuntu live cd. It is the only install on the box, no dual boot. So far I've only been using it to surf via firefox and sometimes listen to streaming music via amarok. I do not get email or download torrents, etc. on this box.

Yesterday it prompted for updates which I installed and rebooted. I could not login. After typing my password it would dump me back to the login page. I searched these forums and found that it may be a disk space issue since I could log in via the CLI. I knew I had copied some large (300MB) movie files on my desktop so I browsed to those files and deleted them. After rebooting I was able to login.

I then went into adept and removed other items such as open office etc. that I was not using.

Another search of these forums on "disk space" prompted me to do a "dh -H" which showed:
/dev/sda1 (size)36G (Used)34g (Avail)0 (use)100%

I then did a sudo apt-get autoclean. Now df -h says:
/dev/sda1 (size)36G (Used)34g (Avail)88M (use)100%

Questions: is it normal for a clean kubuntu install to need larger than a 40gb drive to operate?
If not, is it possible to see what's taking up so much space? I'm concerned about rebooting at this point as I might not be able to get back in and don't have anything more I can remove.
Thanks for your help!

[Knoobquest]

Re: Disk Space Issues - is 40GB too small?

As a newbie myself I can only answer the 40GB part.It is NOT too small.It is plenty of room for Kubuntu.Mine is on 20GB,the main root files only take up about 2-3 GB.Sounds like you have a bunch of something on your hard drive to be taking up 34GB of room.Maybe someone else can help you more.

[brian9000]

Re: Disk Space Issues - is 40GB too small?


I found some help at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=500265

basically I was able to identify the problem by following this post:

Try this at the command line:

Code:
sudo du -c --max-depth=1 | sort -n

Whatever directory is taking up the most space will appear at the bottom of the resulting list. Then cd (change directory) into that (largest) directory and run the above command again. Keep doing that until you drill down to what's taking up the most space. Periodically do a 'ls -lSr' to see what files are in there and you'll find what's taking up the space.

[penguin.ch]

Re: Disk Space Issues - is 40GB too small?

is it possible to see what's taking up so much space

http://www.penguin.ch/dokuwiki/doku....ries:diskusage (i.a.)

Is it normal for a clean install to need larger than 40gb

With an overflowing trash bin and APT cache, respectively, such could happen

By the way: it's apt-get clean you're looking for (not "autoclean"; further reading).