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I am dual booting Ubuntu 19.10 and windows 10 and I keep getting notifications that my / directory has low space. The size of / is 8GB. I have run sudo apt clean but it did not free up much space.

I have been trying to understand if I need to extend that partition and some guides I have found have not helped me. Is there no easy way to just add to it from the free disk space I have? Or do I have to create a new root partition and move everything there?

Any help appreciated.

gparted disks

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  • 8gb is very little. Can you post a snapshot of your disk with gparted? – schrodingerscatcuriosity Oct 30 '19 at 17:09
  • You could perhaps extend the partition to include any free space adjacent to it. But you will need to boot your computer from a Live medium and work from there. It is much easier to hunt for disk space that can be reclaimed. Usually there is some runaway log file that can be deleted. Or your /home folder takes up all the available space. – Jos Oct 30 '19 at 17:10
  • I added a link to s snapshot of the disks. From what I understand I dont have nay free space next to it. –  Oct 30 '19 at 17:54
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    You can use the unallocated 4.88 GB free space between /dev/nvme0np3 and /dev/nvme0np4 to extend the /dev/nvme0np4 to the left of it. You can also use Windows disk management tools to shrink /dev/nvme0np3. – user68186 Oct 30 '19 at 17:59
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    You have a lot of space left on your windows data partition. I would shrink the data partition and then reinstall ubuntu with more space. Should have around 25GBs for /, and more for /home. Backup data first, resizing partitions can sometimes corrupt stuff. – crip659 Oct 30 '19 at 18:14
  • 8GB is too small for / to live within typically; the recommended min size for root partition would be 20GB from my perspective, room for updates/expansion – Thomas Ward Oct 30 '19 at 18:38

2 Answers2

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Your root partition is 7.63 GB, which is too low for current Ubuntu versions. You can tell that indeed 7.18 GB already is used. You need at least 15 GB for your root partition.

You managed to set up a separate /home partition of 13 GB, which also is quite little. In your scenario of dual boot, you would have done better letting the installer work automatically to fill the free space. The installer would default to occupy all free space for a single root partition, that also contains the /home partition. It would also have set up a swap file on that partition.

A single 20 GB (24 GB if you also include the currently unallocated space) partition would be adequate for a Linux system in a dual boot scenario. You could indeed have most of your user data on another partition that you share with Windows.

What to do?

  • Technically the easiest approach would be to erase the linux partitions. Then have an automatic installation where you choose the option to "use the free space".
  • Technically more complicated would be to merge your current / and /home partitions. That would involve making a backup of /home, expanding / (and preferentially also move it to occupy the unallocated space) and then place the /home backup back.
vanadium
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i can see Unallocated space in your machine. So you can use it. Just format the unallocated with ext4 and then you can add that new space to your root directory.

Osanda Rajapakse
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  • To add it to a partition, it has to be adjacent. It isn't. You can of course create a new partition, and move stuff from / to the new partition, but in which case you should describe the processs in a bit more detail :) – vidarlo Oct 30 '19 at 18:41
  • root partition files dont need to be moved to the new partition. I told the root partition can be extended by adding the new partition with growpart command in linux. – Osanda Rajapakse Oct 30 '19 at 18:53
  • Sorry, I missed. It is adjacent. I still believe your answer should include some more detail on how to perform this :) – vidarlo Oct 30 '19 at 18:55