Harddrive reports full drive, deleting /var/log only current solution

[afrodeity]

I have Ubuntu 14.04 installed on a 341.1GB partition.

The drive has been reporting that it is full with 0 bytes remaining.

Have tried finding the problem to no avail.

Can only rectify by deleting /var/log folder, which is not ideal.

It doesn't appear to be a normal log issue inflation issue, but something else?

Any tips or ideas?

[Bashing-om]

afrodeity; Hi !

Let's start by looking at the disk usage,
Post beck the outputs of terminal commands:

df -h
df -i
cf / # so we look from the top
sudo du -sx * | sort -n
cd # to revert to the /home directory as the Present Working Directory
dpkg -l |grep linux- ## as a quicky to isolate to boot full condition from old kernels,

from these see where we go next,

all in the process

[afrodeity]

ok, here goes

$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 803M 9.9M 793M 2% /run
/dev/sda5 318G 221G 81G 74% /
tmpfs 4.0G 62M 3.9G 2% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 4.0G 0 4.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1 140G 124G 17G 89% /media/Magenta
cgmfs 100K 0 100K 0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs 803M 116K 803M 1% /run/user/1000
tmpfs 803M 0 803M 0% /run/user/65534

df -i
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
udev 192267 662 191605 1% /dev
tmpfs 204120 976 203144 1% /run
/dev/sda5 21159936 1833244 19326692 9% /
tmpfs 204120 107 204013 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 204120 5 204115 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 204120 18 204102 1% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1 17584648 316905 17267743 2% /media/Magenta
cgmfs 204120 14 204106 1% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs 204120 51 204069 1% /run/user/1000
tmpfs 204120 4 204116 1% /run/user/65534

sudo du -sx * | sort -n
du: cannot access 'proc/9066/task/9066/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/9066/task/9066/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/9066/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/9066/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory

dpkg -l |grep linux-
ii linux-base 4.5ubuntu1~16.04.1 all Linux image base package
ii linux-firmware 1.157.21 all Firmware for Linux kernel drivers
ii linux-generic 4.4.0.143.151 i386 Complete Generic Linux kernel and headers
ii linux-headers-4.4.0-143 4.4.0-143.169 all Header files related to Linux kernel version 4.4.0
ii linux-headers-4.4.0-143-generic 4.4.0-143.169 i386 Linux kernel headers for version 4.4.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-headers-generic 4.4.0.143.151 i386 Generic Linux kernel headers
ii linux-image 3.11.0.19.20 i386 Generic Linux kernel image.
ii linux-image-4.4.0-143-generic 4.4.0-143.169 i386 Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-generic 4.4.0.143.151 i386 Generic Linux kernel image
ii linux-libc-dev:i386 4.4.0-143.169 i386 Linux Kernel Headers for development
ii linux-modules-4.4.0-143-generic 4.4.0-143.169 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for version 4.4.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-modules-extra-4.4.0-143-generic 4.4.0-143.169 i386 Linux kernel extra modules for version 4.4.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-sound-base 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu5 all base package for ALSA and OSS sound systems
ii linux-source 4.4.0.143.151 all Linux kernel source with Ubuntu patches
ii linux-source-4.4.0 4.4.0-143.169 all Linux kernel source for version 4.4.0 with Ubuntu patches
ii syslinux-common 3:6.03+dfsg-11ubuntu1 all collection of bootloaders (common)
ii syslinux-legacy 2:3.63+dfsg-2ubuntu8 i386 Bootloader for Linux/i386 using MS-DOS floppies
rc syslinux-themes-debian 12-4 all collection of boot loaders (theme metapackage)
rc syslinux-themes-debian-wheezy 12-4 all collection of boot loaders (debian-wheezy theme)

[afrodeity]

After about three hours uptime

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 803M 9.9M 793M 2% /run
/dev/sda5 318G 305G 0 100% /
tmpfs 4.0G 41M 3.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 4.0G 0 4.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1 140G 124G 17G 89% /media/Magenta
cgmfs 100K 0 100K 0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs 803M 116K 803M 1% /run/user/1000

[Bashing-om]

afrodeity - Ouch

After about three hours uptime

try again :

cd /
sudo du -sx * | sort -n

and give it time to seek and complete

For comparison is my result:

sysop@x1804mini:/$ sudo du -sx * | sort -n
[sudo] password for sysop: 
du: cannot access 'proc/15471/task/15471/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/15471/task/15471/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/15471/fd/3': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/15471/fdinfo/3': No such file or directory
0	dev
0	initrd.img
0	initrd.img.old
0	proc
0	sys
0	vmlinuz
0	vmlinuz.old
4	cdrom
4	lib64
4	opt
4	srv
8	media
8	mnt
8	snap
16	lost+found
64	tmp
80	root
1384	run
2344	core
5836	grub
7636	etc
11460	sbin
11708	bin
123940	boot
807132	lib
955124	var
975364	home
2025364	usr
sysop@x1804mini:/$

where in your case I expect /var/ to be running amuck. In that case we need to look at the log file{s) and see what the system is screaming so about.

ain't nothing but a thing

[afrodeity]

took longer than expected
var is tres bloated ...

du: cannot access 'proc/936/task/936/fdinfo/16': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/936/fdinfo/18': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/23468/task/23468/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/23468/task/23468/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/23468/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'proc/23468/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
0	dev
0	initrd.img
0	proc
0	sys
0	vmlinuz
4	cdrom
4	mnt
4	srv
8	snap
52	media
56	tmp
144	~
10060	run
14148	sbin
14592	bin
50188	lost+found
96240	etc
113868	boot
292444	root
733304	lib
1005636	opt
21058176	usr
105459224	var
204139960	home

if I cd into /var and do du -h, I think we have the culprit:

100G	./log/cups

cd /var/log/cups

ls -al
total 84278444
drwxr-x--- 2 root lp            4096 Mar 30 07:46 .
drwxrwxr-x 6 root syslog        4096 Mar 30 07:46 ..
-rw-r----- 1 root adm              0 Mar 30 07:46 access_log
-rw-r----- 1 root adm    86300999825 Mar 30 14:01 error_log
-rw-r----- 1 root adm              0 Mar 30 07:46 page_log

tail error_log
W [30/Mar/2019:14:03:06 +0200] Notifier for subscription 333 (dbus://) went away, retrying!
E [30/Mar/2019:14:03:06 +0200] Directory \"/usr/lib/cups/notifier\" has insecure permissions (040755/uid=1000/gid=1000).

sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/cups/notifier

[Bashing-om]

afrodeity; Well ...

At least the problem is identified, However, I do not see that you have a "good" solution.

For reference:

sysop@x1804mini:~$ ls -al /usr/lib/cups/notifier
total 64
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 18 12:47 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 Apr 3 2018 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14328 Mar 3 05:28 dbus
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18424 Mar 3 05:28 mailto
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18424 Mar 3 05:28 rss

sysop@x1804mini:~$ ls -ld /usr/lib/cups/notifier
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 18 12:47 /usr/lib/cups/notifier
sysop@x1804mini:~$

where on my system root is the owner and group. It is not nice to change system files

a deeper dig in order ?

[afrodeity]

Yep, I didn't fix the problem with the right permissions and ownership, will take a look at your post, for now, here is another possible solution:

In cupsd.conf

disable logging

LogLevel none

UPDATE: okay, I see I had the wrong ownership for /usr/lib/cups/notifier and /usr/lib/cups

[Impavidus]

Note that 14.04 only has a few weeks of support left. It's time to prepare for an upgrade.