3
Filesystem     1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev             3939900         0   3939900   0% /dev
tmpfs             794004      2508    791496   1% /run
/dev/sda2       97905948  92533256    356324 100% /
tmpfs            3970008         0   3970008   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs               5120         4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs            3970008         0   3970008   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop1         56832     56832         0 100% /snap/core18/1988
/dev/loop2        101760    101760         0 100% /snap/core/11187
/dev/loop5           256       256         0 100% /snap/gtk2-common-themes/13
/dev/loop7        224256    224256         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/72
/dev/loop0        101632    101632         0 100% /snap/core/11167
/dev/loop3         66432     66432         0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1514
/dev/loop6        166784    166784         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/145
/dev/loop9         66688     66688         0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1515
/dev/loop8         56832     56832         0 100% /snap/core18/2066
/dev/loop11       114048    114048         0 100% /snap/shutter/27
/dev/loop4        224256    224256         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/66
/dev/loop10        32896     32896         0 100% /snap/snapd/12057
/dev/loop12        52224     52224         0 100% /snap/snap-store/542
/dev/loop15        33152     33152         0 100% /snap/snapd/12159
/dev/loop13        52224     52224         0 100% /snap/snap-store/547
/dev/loop14       302720    302720         0 100% /snap/vlc/2288
/dev/nvme0n1p1     98304     33574     64730  35% /boot/efi
/dev/sda3      858014832 246173468 568186864  31% /home
tmpfs             794000        28    793972   1% /run/user/125
tmpfs             794000        76    793924   1% /run/user/1000

How do I free up the root space? Why is it taking up so much space? Please help.

Ankur Nath
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2 Answers2

3

As guiverc said you can use du command to see disk space in use. You can also use ncdu which will show you visually.

Also check the inodes, as you may have ran out of them specially if you work with many small files:

df -i -h /
Filesystem     Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p2    30M  1.9M   28M    7% /

If is your workstation and you don't need the logs you can delete them. They are located in:

/var/log

You can check the space in use with:

sudo du -h /var/log/

In my case I'm using 4.5 GB with 4.1GB in /var/log/journal. So if you want to limit the size of your log journal to 100MB you can do:

sudo journalctl --vacuum-size=100M

If you installed applications and later you uninstalled them, common libraries no longer in use may be using space in your disk. You can clean that space with:

sudo apt autoremove

Cheers

Carles Mateo
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Q. How do I free up the root space?

You will need to find files that you can either move or delete to free up space.

Q. Why is it taking up so much space?

Nobody here can answer this question. You know what is on your system. We do not.

Suggestions:

  1. Start by looking at the /var/log directory and seeing of there are files that can be moved or deleted
  2. Uninstall any applications you may not need anymore
  3. If you have databases on the machine, consider moving the data/log files to a different partition
matigo
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    I'd normally use du (disk usage) to navigate down to the directories that use the most space.. That maybe could be mentioned, but good attempt to answer a vague question. – guiverc Jun 23 '21 at 06:45