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I'm a noob when it comes to Linux. So bare with me here...

I'm trying to make a new user. Running adduser goes without any problems. The user's home folder is there if I look under /home/

But after restarting the server, the user vanishes completely, including his home folder. All of these issues started happening after the server ran out of storage. After restarting the server it freed up 50% of the storage. But now this happens...

Anyone ever tried something similar before?

Mikazuki
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  • If your Ubuntu Server system is rather new, I suggest that you backup files that you want to keep and then re-install the operating system. After that, please keep an eye on disk usage in order to avoid that the system disk alias root partition gets full. – sudodus Jun 23 '20 at 15:05
  • I'm pretty lucky that this actually happened on a brand new non-critical fileserver. Those damn robots use it for temp storage. Somehow they went completely livid and filled up the entire thing... – Mikazuki Jun 23 '20 at 15:15
  • If there is a high risk that the drive will get full again, I suggest that you monitor the disk usage automatically, and when it exceeds some level, say 90%, reboot the computer gracefully. – sudodus Jun 23 '20 at 15:18
  • Hmm. The robots automatically delete files like us, humans, through the GUI. I thought all of the deleted files were lying in some sort of 'trashcan' but I couldn't find it. After getting frustrated I restarted it and this happened... I can't really have it restarting normally though... – Mikazuki Jun 23 '20 at 15:23
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  • Backup important files; 2. Re-install; 3. Set up automatic monitoring of the disk usage. -- I am almost 100% sure, that this is the fastest way to solve the problem (much faster than to try to repair the damaged system).
    • – sudodus Jun 23 '20 at 15:30
  • I've figured it out... The disk that Ubuntu was installed on malfunctioned. I have no clue how or why. But you can only read from the disks. No writing at all. You can't even format them. I drove over and physically removed the disks and put them into another system only to get the same result. I haven't tried to format the disks on an Linux machine though. But Windows can't do anything so far. – Mikazuki Jun 23 '20 at 17:27
  • If you are lucky, it is 'only' corrupted file systems, which might be fixed, but more likely you would have to create a new partition table and file systems. But first you should check the S.M.A.R.T. information, for example with smartctl from the package smartmontools, or in graphical mode with gnome-disks – sudodus Jun 23 '20 at 17:35
  • I've tried to clear the disks with Diskpart without any effect. I can just see and look through one of the two partitions on the disk. The boot partition is the only visible one. – Mikazuki Jun 23 '20 at 17:49
  • What does the S.M.A.R.T. information tell you? Is the drive hardware good or bad? – sudodus Jun 23 '20 at 19:29
  • No SMART information apparently. But I tried to start up a new Ubuntu and ran gparted. No errors or anything came up. I tried to formate the drives but they just returned to normal after I refreshed the window. READ but still no write. I tried to put the drives back into the original machine and rm -r on the sensitive files. But they just came back again /_/... I can install software and use it until I restart. Then it'll be gone afterwards. – Mikazuki Jun 23 '20 at 20:05
  • If it is a modern drive, hard disk drive or SSD, there should be S.M.A.R.T. information. In addition the behaviour you decribe looks like 'gridlock'. -- So I think the drive is damaged physically or electronically, and cannot be repaired. – sudodus Jun 24 '20 at 08:03
  • Called the manufacturer. They said it's a built-in failsafe. Got a new one now. – Mikazuki Jun 25 '20 at 18:06