[12.04 x64] Hard Disk Space fills up IMMIDATELY! URGENT HELP PLEASE!

[ksaul]

Like the title says; As soon as I delete something (from my filesystem, home folder or any folder for that matter), the space immidately gets filled with data and my availble/free disk space goes back to 0 bytes IMMIDATELY!!

When I run Disk Usage Analyzer, it says:

Total Filesystem capacity: 620.6gb (used: 497.4 GB available: 123.3 GB)

But if I run 'df' in terminal:

Filesystem     1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb6      313048792 297146792         0 100% /
udev             2015468        12   2015456   1% /dev
tmpfs             809712      1388    808324   1% /run
none                5120         0      5120   0% /run/lock
none             2024272       476   2023796   1% /run/shm
/dev/sdc1           2000       272      1628  15% /media/9bc0df1b-5af6-41b2-a7a3-04fe1bc5b0b2
/dev/sdb2      292968744 188550132 104418612  65% /media/0EE20075E2006377

(/dev/sdb2/ is Windows 7 partition | /dev/sdb6 is Ubuntu 12.04)

I have deleted the ~/.xsession-error file (was close to 200gb), and created an ~/.xsession-error/ folder so that isnt what is taking up space. Its working as planned, and consistant at 0bytes.

I have ran in terminal:

sudo apt-get autoremove && apt-get autoclean && apt-get clean

to remove unwanted packages, old files, and the apt-get cache - still no luck.

I have ran Computer Janitor, the list is clear - nothing left to remove.

I have deleted all the files & folders in ~/tmp/ - no help...

I have gone through the ~/.cache/ folder and deleted any programs that no longer exist.

I installed and ran (as root) bleachbit TWICE, again not helping.. whatever space gets opened up - it immidately gets filled back in with something!

Disk Usage Analyzer is no help, it shows which folders are taking up the most space, but obviously the /home/ folder is at the top.. I have already gone through the hidden files/folders in the /home/ and deleted unwanted/large files.

I cant figure out WTF is running in the background that is taking up so much freaking space! I was going to just say F it and fresh install; but i cant even keep enough space open long enough to download the fresh install file off of ubuntu.com

Can someone throw me a bone here and help! I dont know what else I can do... im loosing my mind here!

[Impavidus]

I have deleted the ~/.xsession-error file (was close to 200gb), and created an ~/.xsession-error/ folder so that isnt what is taking up space. Its working as planned, and consistant at 0bytes.

Your .xsession-error log was definitely the cause of your problem, it shouldn't be larger than a few kB. You replaced it with a directory, which is an interesting hack but didn't solve your problem, so I think the errors are now stored somewhere else or every time your system is unable to write to your .xsession-error it logs an entry somewhere in /var/log. Those logs are filling up your disk space.

There is a way to prevent log files from growing too large (forgot how, I hope someone else remembers), but the best way is of course finding a way to generate less errors. Find out which logs are filling your disk and then look for repeating error messages. Post them here if you like, it should give us a clue about which program generates those errors.

[oldfred]

I would look into the logs to see if some error is a run away and continuously filling a log file.

cd / or cd /home
sudo du -hc --max-depth=1
Shows just /
sudo du -hx --max-depth=1 / 2> /dev/null

[AdePanko]

Had the same problem and it kept getting worse. If you follow the below, remember to reboot to free the existing file.

Disk kept getting full every few days - 33gigs get chewed up in less than an hour.

turned out to be ~/.xsession-errors file

What I did:
rm ~/.xsession-errors
ln -s /dev/null ~/.xsession-errors



http://askubuntu.com/questions/17705...can-i-disable:

There is a file called /etc/X11/Xsession. Which will create the symlink to a tmp file. IE. Starts on line number 61

ERRFILE=$HOME/.xsession-errors

# attempt to create an error file; abort if we cannot
if (umask 077 && touch "$ERRFILE") 2> /dev/null && [ -w "$ERRFILE" ] &&
[ ! -L "$ERRFILE" ]; then
chmod 600 "$ERRFILE"
elif ERRFILE=$(tempfile 2> /dev/null); then
if ! ln -sf "$ERRFILE" "${TMPDIR:=/tmp}/xsession-$USER"; then
message "warning: unable to symlink \"$TMPDIR/xsession-$USER\" to" \
"\"$ERRFILE\"; look for session log/errors in" \
"\"$TMPDIR/xsession-$USER\"."
fi
else
errormsg "unable to create X session log/error file; aborting."
fi
You can cp this Xsession file to Xsession.bak. Then go a head and point your ERRFILE to /dev/null IE. Line 83

exec >> /dev/null 2>&1

[dannyboy79]

i've seen this issue multiple times now, is there a bug filed so that .xsession-error file doesn't get to be SEVERAL HUNDRED GIGABYTES? People were posting their files size like a competition, one was 600+ GIGABYTES. that's just absurd, hopefully canonical will patch this or something.