system is running in low graphics mode. Need help deleting files

[fishman35]

Hello all. I think I have read just about every forum I can and none of the suggestions have worked. I cannot reinstall Unbuntu because it took me forever to get DRBL working correctly. Here are a couple of things I need help with:

• No network connection to get computer janitor or autoclean. We are behind a proxy and cannot get out, unleass there is a way to set the proxy from the terminal.
• I have check my space and my hard drive is full, but I cannot find what is taking up all of the space. I am back on this now, but I remember trying to delete the PROC cache from another forum post and I get "access denied". I am logged into my standard login, which may not have root capabilty. I have ran sudo to no avail.

Is there any way to clear files from the CTRL+ALT+F1 terminal? How to I get full rooth access? I had deleted image files that were in gigibytes from the /home/partimag directory, but the drive still shows full.

Please help! Thanks so much for any assistance.

[SlugSlug]

Start with emptying Trash

sudo find / -name ".Trash*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

[fishman35]

I emptied the trash. Looks like only 986MB. I created the log, put in a USB key and it mounts as sdb. How do I copy the file over to the key?

Somewhere I have GB's of data that is either cached or not truly deleted.

[SlugSlug]

post output of

du / -sch

and

df -h

[fishman35]

So I typed that, and it gives a list. How do I get it to the key to post here? Remember, I am a beginner. I think the Proc directory is the one that is killing me, but I cannot delete anything. Access denied. I run sudo. Nogo. I try su and it states authentication failed.

[mcduck]

So I typed that, and it gives a list. How do I get it to the key to post here? Remember, I am a beginner. I think the Proc directory is the one that is killing me, but I cannot delete anything. Access denied. I run sudo. Nogo. I try su and it states authentication failed.

/proc is a virtual filesystem which doesn't exist on your disk, so there's no need to worry about it. It doesn't use any disk space at all.

(In Linux everything is a file, including every system process and everything that's going on in the computer. And those files appear in /proc. So it's definitely not a place where you'd want to delete anything even if you could)

Anyway, if you want to free some space you could try running "sudo apt-get clean" to remove the package management's cached packages. After that it's usually just a question of taking a look at things stored in user's own home directories...

[fishman35]

So I mounted the drive into another working Ubuntu system. It states 117.6 of 120.00 GB used on that drive. I can use Nautilus and access the drive, but none of the folders add up to 117.6GB total. It is like there are images that I deleted, but they are not really gone.

Once again, no access to internet to download utilities, and I already emptied the trash from the terminal. There is no way an install of Ubuntu is 120GB.

[mcduck]

You don't need to install anything, "sudo apt-get clean" will work as long as you have apt-get installed (which you will, on any Ubuntu system).

...and same goes for the du and df commands. And if you aren't able to copy the outputs here, that's fine, just take a look yourself to see where the space is used. If it's anything inside /home, you can safely remove it yourself, and for everything else you should ask for more instructions (as deleting wrong things from any system directory might break your system).

[fishman35]

I ran "sudo apt-get clean" both in the terminal when this hard drive was in the original system that would not boot, and now as a mounted drive through the terminal. Still shows 117GB used. I deleted everything in Home, still 117GB used. I checked every folder size, still does not add up to 117GB used.



Could this be that it is an SSD drive and needs TRIM?

[mcduck]

Shouldn't have any effect on file system level which is where most tools will report the available space.

I'd still recommend taking a second look with the "du / -sch" command SlugSlug suggested, it should tell you exactly where the space is being used. (And if you want, you can then cd into that directory, run "du -sch" to check the sizes of it's contents, find the largest, cd there & repeat again until you've found the problem.)