[ale] Can't load X due to no free space on root (/)

[Trey Sizemore]

Michael H. Warfield wrote:

>On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 09:09:13PM -0500, Trey Sizemore wrote:
>  
>
>>Computer was working like a champ a few days ago.  Tried to start back 
>>up yesterday and saw one of the messages during boot up say something to 
>>the effect of (sorry not in front of the machine now):
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>No room on / [0] expecting [20000]
>>    
>>
>
>	Ouch.
>
>  
>
>>I haven't done anything new to the setup or installed/upgraded anything 
>>new.
>>    
>>
>
>	Hmmm...
>
>  
>
>>Something I thought was weird (and I'm sure it's just my understanding), 
>>but when I did an 'ls -al' on my /home directory, I remembered that I 
>>still have a couple of  .iso images taking up some space (this is a 25GB 
>>drive).  So just out of curiosity I deleted them freeing up a couple of 
>>gigs.  But when I restarted the machine I got the same message about 
>>root (/) being full then taking me to the CLI login after some failed 
>>attempts to start X.
>>    
>>
>
>  
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>>I have used 'df' to see that the / partition is 5.7G of which there is 
>>no free space.  I have removed files from /tmp as well as a number of 
>>files in /var/log.  Still getting the same 'df' output.
>>    
>>
>
>	5.7G for / ?  And it's all gone?  Ouch.
>
>	How have you got this partitioned?  I gathered that /home is
>on a separate partition.  What about /usr and /var?  If /var is on
>another partition it can't eat your root file system.  You sometimes
>have to be careful about removing files from /var/log.  Sometimes they
>are held open.
>
>	Did you do an ls -la on /tmp?  On /?
>
>	This make take a while but try this:
>
>	cd /
>	du -s *
>
>	If /var is on your root partition, the next place I would go
>looking would be in /var/spool.  Look for huge mailboxes or crap in
>the sendmail queue (/var/spool/mqueue).
>
>  
>
>>While I'm trying to find out what has taken all of the / space, I 
>>thought of allocating some of my /home partition (currently using only 
>>14%) to / so I can at least start x and log in to KDE.  I believe that 
>>parted is the way to go after reading the man page, but just wondered of 
>>someone knew the correct syntax for doing this (as in resize vs. move).
>>    
>>
>
>	If you haven't figured out what has eaten you space, you are
>taking real chances trying to manipulate things.  There's an off chance
>that someone may have busted into your system and is storing stuff in
>a hidden directory (or worse).
>
>  
>
After doing a 'find / -mount -size +500000k -print' I found a /backup 
directory that contained the Mandrake 9.2 3-disk set.  I moved them to 
my home partition and now all seems well.  With the freely allocated 
space available, I am now able to start the X server.

Yippee!