Re: 100% used / file system. Help!

[Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday 21 September 2011 13:26:56 Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> This thread has been going on too long Lisi.  Let's get this fixed
> already.  :)  Run these commands to see if you've run out of free space
> or run out of inodes:
>
> # df -h -x tmpfs
> # df -i -h -x tmpfs

Thanks, Stan.  Your concern is much appreciated  Mea culpa.  I went to bed - I 
was running out of matchsticks to use to hold my eyelids open - and have been 
tied up all morning.  I admit to having been somewhat swamped in knowing what 
to try first!!  When my attempt to use a live CD foundered on my less than 
perfect knowledge of a US keyboard, I next tried GParted, which had also been 
suggested.  (I couldn't use the live CD because I couldn't find the pipe.  I 
now have, thanks to Dom.  It is where the tilda is on my keyboard.)

Overnight I resized the / partition to take the rest of that hard drive.  I 
had used only half of it to leave room for a dual boot if I should ever want 
one.

So now things are working again, but I would still like to know what went 
wrong, and shall work through all the suggestions until either I solve what 
went wrong or I run out of things to try.

Therefore:
Tux:/home/lisi#  df -h -x tmpfs
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1              73G   30G   41G  42% /
/dev/sda1             231G   38G  182G  17% /home
Tux:/home/lisi# df -i -h -x tmpfs
Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/hda1               4.7M    171K    4.5M    4% /
/dev/sda1                15M     91K     15M    1% /home
Tux:/home/lisi#

So it wasn't inodes.  30 G was the size of the original partition, so it still 
thinks that the 30G was all used up.

As I try the other things, I'll report back.  If nothing else, it might be 
useful to someone looking in the archives.  It may, of course, remain one of 
life's little mysteries.

I have learnt two things at least:  
Keep an eye on your / partition and not just on /home.  That too was filling 
up, but I knew and did something about it.
Use Clonezilla or something - and set-selections, because you never know when 
you may need to reinstall.

Many thanks to all of you.  I really, really appreciate what you all did to 
help me.

Lisi