LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

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whytheam

LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by whytheam »

This has happened twice now. After coming back to my computer after leaving it idle for a few hours, Mint tells me that my primary disk is almost full. The system shows that my home folder is taking up almost 200GB of space, but I don't have nearly that much data on the drive. Upon further inception, none of my subfolders in /home have more that 6GB of data in them. This points to a possible culprit being an expanding file. However, i don't know which file it could be. After I reboot my computer, the disk shows the proper data amount.

Content of home folder:
.bash_history
.bash_logout
.bashrc.dpk-dist
.conkyrc
.dmrc
.esd_auth
.face
.gksu.lock
.gtk-bookmarks
.ICEauthority
.nvidia-settings-rc
.profile
.pulse-cookie
.Xauthority
.xsession-errors
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
jdackle

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by jdackle »

I don't remember now if that graphical application allows it, but you could try "digging in" down the subfolders til you pin down the concerning file...?

Or run, in a terminal:

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find $HOME -size +10G
Which would look for files bigger than 10GB in your home folder. You can change your file-size settings for find with the help below:

From 'man find':

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       Numeric arguments can be specified as

       +n     for greater than n,

       -n     for less than n,

       n      for exactly n.
And from the same man page:

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       -size n[cwbkMG]
              File uses n units of space.  The following suffixes can be used:

              `b'    for 512-byte blocks (this is the default if no suffix is used)

              `c'    for bytes

              `w'    for two-byte words

              `k'    for Kilobytes (units of 1024 bytes)

              `M'    for Megabytes (units of 1048576 bytes)

              `G'    for Gigabytes (units of 1073741824 bytes)
Monsta
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Posts: 3071
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:46 am

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by Monsta »

whytheam wrote:Mint tells me that my primary disk is almost full.
Is it only that disk utility that tells you so? How about other programs? What Nautilus/Nemo/Caja (whatever file manager you use) says? What would "df -h" in the console say?
whytheam

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by whytheam »

I receive a notification from Cinnamon, Nemo shows the disk almost being full, my conky shows the disk at 90%+, and the Disk Usage Analyzer shows the disk being full. Tonight I'm going to leave my computer idle and see if I can recreate the problem for a third time. I will report back if successful.
Monsta
Level 10
Level 10
Posts: 3071
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:46 am

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by Monsta »

Try "df -h" in the console too. :)
TomRoche

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by TomRoche »

Monsta wrote:Try "df -h" in the console too. :)
and if you then want to identify the largest files, try something like

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DEPTH=3
ls -alhS $(find -maxdepth ${DEPTH} -type f 2> /dev/null) 2> /dev/null | head
in bash in your console (probably 'gnome-terminal'). 'DEPTH' is of search in the filesystem: the larger you make it, the longer the operation will take, and eventually it will fail with 'ls: Argument list too long'. So try starting with 'DEPTH=1' and increasing til failure.

To see errors, remove the '2> /dev/null'.
whytheam

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by whytheam »

It just happened again. It's my .xsesson-errors file that's exploding. All the errors are similar to this:

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31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM rfbAuthPasswordChecked: password check failed
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM [IPv4] Got connection from client 204.51.97.213
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM   other clients:
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM      204.51.97.213
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM      204.51.97.213
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM      204.51.97.213
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM      204.51.97.213
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM      204.51.97.213
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM Client Protocol Version 3.4
31/07/2013 07:21:46 PM Ignoring minor version mismatch

** (vino-server:3621): WARNING **: Deferring authentication of '204.51.97.213' for 5 seconds


** (vino-server:3621): WARNING **: VNC authentication failure from '204.51.97.213'
I think someone's trying to work their way into my world...
Monsta
Level 10
Level 10
Posts: 3071
Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:46 am

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by Monsta »

Wow. So the disk actually gets full after all, and it does so because someone tries to bruteforce your system and the log file grows... wait, grows to 200 Gb? :shock:
eanfrid

Re: LMDE believes disk is full when it isn't

Post by eanfrid »

If your computer is not either behind a router or protected by a firewall, you are indeed offering a vnc access (shared desktop) to it from anywhere on the Internet. You should completely disable this kind of remote access to your computer if you actually never use it for your own needs (and then choose a very strong password if you do use this).
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