var directory full, new Ubuntu 22.04 installation, no further apps permitted

[julius-nepos]

InstalledUbuntu 22.04 onto a system with a 512 GB flash hard drive + a 6 TB HDD.Then upgraded to xUbuntu.


Unableto install Google Chrome but was able to install the xUbuntu-desktop(XFCE). single boot, everything should be clean partitions.


Iget the following Disk Usage picture {see at end}. It appears that the vardirectory has filled up and I am unable to install any apps.

Icreated the following partitions when I installed Ubuntu:
partitions on 500GB (.5TB) hard drive
efi - UEFIboot loader, 1 GB primary partition
/ - Linux system ext4 100 GB
/home - data 273.1 GB
swap 128 GB

Ididn't write down the mount point I created for the 6,000 GB harddrive but it should be findable somewhere.

As mentioned it appears that I have NO room to install any apps despite this being a new clean system with 6.5 TB available.

[TheFu]

Less images.
More data.

Please run and post, as text, these commands:

lsblk -e 7 -o name,type,fstype,size,FSAVAIL,FSUSE%,label,mountpoint
df -hT -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs

No images, please. We can't copy/paste slices of images like we can with text.

[ActionParsnip]

Also, what is the output of:

du -sh /var/*

[julius-nepos]

Hi & thanks for helping. I was able to find that Chrome is apparently installed [it has my bookmarks].
Output is as follows:

sudo lsblk -e 7 -o name,type,fstype,size,FSAVAIL,FSUSE%,label,mountpo int

NAME        TYPE FSTYPE   SIZE FSAVAIL FSUSE% LABEL MOUNTPOINT
sda         disk          5.5T                      
└─sda1      part ext4     5.5T    5.1T     0%       /home
sr0         rom          1024M                      
nvme0n1     disk        476.9G                      
├─nvme0n1p1 part vfat     960M  903.9M     6%       /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 part ext4   100.6G   89.6G     4%       /
├─nvme0n1p3 part swap   121.1G                      [SWAP]
└─nvme0n1p4 part ext4   254.3G  228.5G     3%       /usr

john@Caligula:~$ df -hT -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs

Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p2 ext4   99G  3.8G   90G   5% /
/dev/nvme0n1p4 ext4  250G  8.1G  229G   4% /usr
/dev/nvme0n1p1 vfat  959M   55M  904M   6% /boot/efi
/dev/sda1      ext4  5.5T  9.5G  5.2T   1% /home

john@Caligula:~$ sudo du -sh /var/*

3.0M    /var/backups
597M    /var/cache
5.5M    /var/crash
2.5G    /var/lib
4.0K    /var/local
0    /var/lock
129M    /var/log
4.0K    /var/mail
4.0K    /var/metrics
4.0K    /var/opt
0    /var/run
3.8M    /var/snap
52K    /var/spool
84K    /var/tmp

john@Caligula:~$

[julius-nepos]

Hi,
Thanks so much for replying. All the outputs are listed together.

[TheFu]

Please edit the post above to wrap the terminal output in forum code-tags. The output depends on the columns being retained. Too hard to read otherwise. Don't edit anything, just wrap it with the correct tags ... like you would for BOLD or Italics. The advanced editor has a button (#) for this.

My signature below has a link for BBcode stuff, including how to use 'code-tags', if you need more detailed instructions.

Since /var isn't in a separate file system, we need to look at how full / is. Can't tell without the columns lining up, but it looks like / has about 90G free.

"Directories" don't fill up, unless you've enabled disk quotas. That's not something accidentally enabled. File systems can fill up, but I don't see that. Actually, I think your / is much too large. 40G is all anyone should need for /, especially if they put /home/ onto a different file system, which you've done.

[ActionParsnip]

Looks fine.... What makes you think you have low space?

[TheFu]

Since you've made a separate /usr, you've basically dropped the requirement for / to 20G. Back in the days when storage was expensive and we used NFS whenever possible across machines, having /usr separate from / made sense. Not so much these days.

BTW, if you want to extend the life of your SSD, best to leave at least 20% unused. I've posted my OS layout here a number of times. Bares repeating,

NAME                             TYPE FSTYPE        SIZE FSAVAIL FSUSE% LABEL       MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1                          disk             931.5G                            
├─nvme0n1p1                      part ext2            1M                            
├─nvme0n1p2                      part vfat           50M   43.9M    12%             /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p3                      part ext4          700M    343M    42%             /boot
└─nvme0n1p4                      part LVM2_member 930.8G                            
  ├─vg01-swap01                  lvm  swap          4.1G                            [SWAP]
  ├─vg01-root01                  lvm  ext4           35G   25.8G    19%             /
  ├─vg01-var01                   lvm  ext4           20G   16.1G    12%             /var
  ├─vg01-tmp01                   lvm  ext4            4G    3.6G     1% tmp01       /tmp
  ├─vg01-home01                  lvm  ext4           10G    3.9G    55% home01      /home
  ├─vg01-libvirt--01             lvm  ext4          137G    2.8G    98% libvirt--01 /var/lib/libvirt
  └─vg01-lxd--containers--01     lvm                 30G

See how much easier it is to read with 'code-tags'?
I happen to have a 1TB SSD, but as you can see, I'm actually using less than 200G, so this setup would work for your 500GB SSD too. My /var/ really should be smaller, I made it larger in expectation for bloated snap packages. The last two items are for virtual machines and lxd containers. If you don't use those, then you don't need them.

[julius-nepos]

Thanks,
I suspected that I had run out of room as I saw my graphical disk-useage report showing the /var at all red. Also I thought I was having problems installing Chrome and I was unable to see any control panel for gnome.
I tried re-installing the gnome control panel but couldn't seem to find it. I've used xUbuntu on another computer with 18.04 , abt 2 years ago so went back to it now.

There were a bunch of YouTube guides on Linux partitioning but NONE that I could find addressed the issue of a smaller flash boot drive with a large HDD for data.

Thanks for your partitioning layout. I bought a used HP-2145 {Windows-11, floortop server, 64G Ram} which only had a 500 G flash drive and bought a 6 T HDD for it.
I did Not specifically create the /usr directory, it seems to have created on it's own. I will need a LOT of space under /home

[TheFu]

I've never seen /usr split to a separate file system under any Linux installer. Doing that is definitely a manual thing.

It would be smart to have HOME just used for settings and active document, but not for large files/media. Keep that elsewhere. It is about doing backups.
BTW, if the larger HDD is internal, it would be smart to place the SWAP onto it, not on the SSD. This way, you'll "feel" the system getting slow when swap is being used. That's a good thing. If you feel it, then you can take action, usually by closing a bloated browser.

If you have any specific layout questions, ask. Some background for the purpose of each file system would be helpful, for the non-OS stuff.

You didn't mention backup storage. Hope you have that covered.