Free space & Available space - sys monitor

[Nippon]

Hello to everyone am new here and am happy same time
Have some maybe easy question 4 u but through using Mint over 2 months i did not find answer on this.
As you see on pic below, what is that about, FREE SPACE and AVAILABLE, where are those almost 3 GB on 1 partition and 5GB on 2 partition?
What for linux not letting me use it all?

[rivenathos]

Welcome to the forum!

Well, by default, Debian-based distros reserve 5% of every partition. The 5% is a safety buffer so you can log in to your / if it ever gets full. This is fine in /, but unnecessary in /home or /data. Instead of 5%, you can get by with 1% or even 0%.

If you are interested. this is how that space can be easily reclaimed.

Root privileges in Terminal are necessary for the tweak.

The tweak is using tune2fs. Using tune2fs normally requires it to be run on an unmounted partition. However, this particular tweak can be performed while mounted. Standard warnings apply, so beware before proceeding.

Determine which partitions you wish to tune. Your choice.

Here is what I do:

Code: Select all

sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sda3

or

Code: Select all

sudo tune2fs -m 1 /dev/sda3

Notice the “0″ in the first example and the “1″ in the second example. Those are the percentages you can choose. I use “0″ on my /data, which is sda3. If your home is on sda5 or sda6, adjust the code to your needs.

Once your tweak is completed, go back and check your “free” and “available” numbers. if you chose the “0″ percentage, your numbers should now be the same.

[Nippon]

Thank you for fast and fully well explained answer, that resolve any of my doubts about it.
Now i know what's for is that about, and, well i don't need that space much but nice to know whats going on inside the system

[rivenathos]

Glad this answered your question. I hope you are enjoying your Linux Mint experience thus far.

The 5% used to be a tiny amount when hard drives were smaller, but with the huge drives we use today, the reserved percentage becomes noticeable.

[Pranaone]

will this work on lmde?