Weird Warning that my hard drive is full

[nycap]

Hi,
All of the sudden I have this warning that my hard drive is full. how can this be?? i have done nothing to fill up 70 gigs. how can i clean it?

Thanks!
using ubuntu 12.10

[Bashing-om]

nycap; Hi !

Chances are it is a partition (device as ubuntu sees it) that is full:
Let's look:
terminal commands:

df -h
df -i
sudo du -sx * | sort -n

If you need to drill down further, use cd to move to a directory of interest then repeat the du command.
The results are in megabytes.

I expect that you will find it is the /boot directory that is full.

la -la /boot

Depending on those outputs is the action to be taken.

maybe yes, maybe not so yes

[nycap]

Hi, thanks. I am unclear what this is telling us:

matt@matt-Inspiron-1525:~$ df -h
Filesystem           Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6             65G   61G  879M  99% /
udev                 2.0G  4.0K  2.0G   1% /dev
tmpfs                807M  908K  806M   1% /run
none                 5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none                 2.0G  216K  2.0G   1% /run/shm
none                 100M   88K  100M   1% /run/user
/home/matt/.Private   65G   61G  879M  99% /home/matt
/dev/mmcblk0p1       7.4G  1.9G  5.6G  25% /media/matt/6134-6162
matt@matt-Inspiron-1525:~$ df -i
Filesystem           Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda6           4317184 1002696 3314488   24% /
udev                 208517     554  207963    1% /dev
tmpfs                214007     500  213507    1% /run
none                 214007       3  214004    1% /run/lock
none                 214007       7  214000    1% /run/shm
none                 214007      32  213975    1% /run/user
/home/matt/.Private 4317184 1002696 3314488   24% /home/matt
/dev/mmcblk0p1            0       0       0     - /media/matt/6134-6162
matt@matt-Inspiron-1525:~$ sudo du -sx * | sort -n
[sudo] password for matt:

Any help will be much apprecitated.

[Bashing-om]

nycap;

Hey, not a problem to explain,, and help is what we do best !
see this:

/dev/sda6 65G 61G 879M 99% /

says you have no head room (99 % used !) on the partition sda6 that is mounted as "/" (root) .

So, what is taking up all your disk space, we do a du (disk usage) command to see:
To have the authorization to look at certain directories we need elevated privileges, that is where "sudo" come into play .. sudo = Super User DO.

Now we know that "/" is in a separate partiton than is /home .. and we want to look at "/".
So, change the command line's present working directory by the change directory (cd) command:
do terminal command:

cd /

now let's take a look:

sudo du -sx * | sort -n

here with "disk usage: we are looking at all the files at and below the PWD , the "s" argument = --summarize, display only a total for each argument; and x = --one-file-system, skip directories on different file systems. OK so far ? .. now we are taking the output of du and with the pipe (|) utility and inputting that output into the utility "sort" -> Write sorted concatenation of all FILE(s) to standard output the "n" argument = --numeric-sort, compare according to string numerical value.

With that info I still expect to see the /boot directory as full.
verify:

ls -la /boot

Now when it is confirmed that /boot is full, we will take measures to remove the old unused kernels and headers. Which will return you some operating space. We will want to clean things up a bit first .. to see if we can get enough head room for "apt-get remove" to operate in.

And to return to /home as your Present Working Directory - done looking - do:
terminal code:

cd

which with no arguments to the "cd" command return one to their /home directory.

small steps,

but we will get there

[Bashing-om]

nycap; Hey !

I am done for this session, I have an early out in my AM and must retire.
Perhaps others will take up my slack.
I will check back with you in about 14 hours.

cheers

[Impavidus]

See this thread for some general ways of troubleshooting full disks: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1122670
You have to find out which directory is causing the problem.

[nycap]

Hi,
bleacbit and emptying the trash bin freed 20 gigs so i have some time to get this under control. but I am confused as to what exactly is taking up the other 79% or 50 gigs of space? i dont download music or anything like that. and the boot directory is loaded with what looks like encrypted files of some sort.
thanks!

[philinux]

Hi,
bleacbit and emptying the trash bin freed 20 gigs so i have some time to get this under control. but I am confused as to what exactly is taking up the other 79% or 50 gigs of space? i dont download music or anything like that. and the boot directory is loaded with what looks like encrypted files of some sort.
thanks!

Possibly old kernels. They can take up a lot of space. Unless bleachbit has already done this.

I use this, step 5 includes a dry run so you can see exactly what the remove will do. I run this now and again.

http://tuxtweaks.com/2010/10/remove-...h-one-command/

[nycap]

Possibly old kernels. They can take up a lot of space. Unless bleachbit has already done this.

I use this, step 5 includes a dry run so you can see exactly what the remove will do. I run this now and again.

http://tuxtweaks.com/2010/10/remove-...h-one-command/

for some reason it wont let me do step 5:

matt@matt-Inspiron-1525:~$ dpkg -l linux-* | awk '/^ii/{ print $2}' | grep -v -e `uname -r | cut -f1,2 -d"-"` | grep -e [0-9] | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libc6-dev : Depends: linux-libc-dev but it is not going to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[philinux]

Run these. Post back any errors.

sudo dpkg --configure -a

sudo apt-get install -f

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade