No space in root

Question

The moment I try to install something, I get an error of insufficient disk storage. In the above screenshot, there is a mismatch of space left in root for reasons I can't figure out. Last time when I ignored the message of insufficient disk storage, I starting facing infinite loop issues. Can you please suggest a permanent fix for this.

19Gb is more than enough for a desktop. So please explain why / contains 17Gb? Did you install a mysql and have a large database in there? Or websites? If you do ... those do not belong on / and need a personal mount point — Rinzwind, Sep 16 '20 at 14:45
Should I keep my desktop clean? Where should I store the Desktop files? — Malika Arora, Sep 16 '20 at 14:47
I'm not able to figure out how to check what is consuming al the space — Malika Arora, Sep 16 '20 at 14:48
@MalikaArora You can find large files consuming much space in root partition.
find / -type f -print0 | xargs -0 du -h | sort -rh | head -n 10 — KK Patel, Sep 16 '20 at 14:52
@MalikaArora "I'm not able to figure out how to check what is consuming al the space" I suggested in my first comment an application that does just that. — schrodingerscatcuriosity, Sep 16 '20 at 15:05
filelight is also an app that will help you discover what's taking up the most space. It will show pie chart representations of the size of files and folders within a given path. I suggest that you STOP using the OS and switch to a live session. The longer you operate your system with no free space, you increase the chance of the system encountering an unrecoverable catastrophe. — Nmath, Sep 16 '20 at 15:29
Does this answer your question? How do I free up disk space? and How do I find out which version and derivative of Ubuntu is right for my hardware in terms of minimal system requirements? — karel, Sep 16 '20 at 17:33

kyodake · Answer 1 · 2020-09-17T00:06:39.080

Try this:

In a terminal run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --reinstall deborphan
sudo deborphan
sudo apt --purge remove $(deborphan)
sudo deborphan --libdevel
sudo apt --purge remove $(deborphan --libdevel)
sudo deborphan --find-config
sudo dpkg --purge $(deborphan --find-config)
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt clean
sudo rm -rf /root/.local/share/Trash/*/** &> /dev/null

=========================================

For a permanent solution, you should periodically run, after application installations and system updates.

These commands:

sudo deborphan
sudo apt --purge remove $(deborphan)
sudo deborphan --libdevel
sudo apt --purge remove $(deborphan --libdevel)
sudo deborphan --find-config
sudo dpkg --purge $(deborphan --find-config)
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt clean

Please check the second image. It got reduced to 90%. Please suggest a permanent fix for this. — Malika Arora, Sep 16 '20 at 17:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 16 '20 at 17:58

Inodes (df -i) shows how many inodes (file, dirs, links) you have not their block ( space) usage.

In your case you have very few but big files.

To know where these files are is a good start. To check this you need to run (as root) something like:

cd / && du -d 1 -m | sort -n -r

Which gives you the size in MB of every single directory.

This is a good start to know if you have too many data (usually in /home) or too many softwares (usually in /usr or /opt) or a lot of garbage (usually in /var)

No space in root

2 Answers2