Re: MX 23.6: Root Partition full: how to reover space?
Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2025 6:48 pm
CharlesV's recipe for getting rid of that swap file is a good idea, including the backup!
20G for /var seems like a lot to me. I just looked at three machines (our media server (MX), a Proxmox server in my study, and a Raspberry Pi in my office at work), and the biggest /var was 3.8G.
Using the DU script should help. Just cd to /var and run it there, then do the same in the top five or so directory trees
I find it easiest to have two terminal windows open: one on the left with DU's output and the one to its right (overlapping but so that I can still see the output in the other) which I use to investigate the top few directory trees. Those investigations are usually much faster than the initial DU run because the kernel caches quite a bit, making for less actual disc access.
One word of warning when copying & pasting scripts, especially ones you run as root: read the man pages of the commands they run, so that you understand what's going on. I once renamed a production machine to "-f" because I forgot that in its variant of UNIX, running "hostname -f" did not return the fully qualified domain name.
20G for /var seems like a lot to me. I just looked at three machines (our media server (MX), a Proxmox server in my study, and a Raspberry Pi in my office at work), and the biggest /var was 3.8G.
Using the DU script should help. Just cd to /var and run it there, then do the same in the top five or so directory trees
I find it easiest to have two terminal windows open: one on the left with DU's output and the one to its right (overlapping but so that I can still see the output in the other) which I use to investigate the top few directory trees. Those investigations are usually much faster than the initial DU run because the kernel caches quite a bit, making for less actual disc access.
One word of warning when copying & pasting scripts, especially ones you run as root: read the man pages of the commands they run, so that you understand what's going on. I once renamed a production machine to "-f" because I forgot that in its variant of UNIX, running "hostname -f" did not return the fully qualified domain name.