[Solved] Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

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gordon.cooke

[Solved] Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by gordon.cooke »

Been having an issue for awhile of notices about low disk space- at boot, download fails due to no space, slow performance etc. But when I check GParted every drive has many GB free.

I have a bit if a complex setup. 4 drives. One is 150GB and has boot, root and swap. The other three are 3TB each and are just media- with folders mounted to ~/video, ~/pictures, etc. Those three are all about 250GB free in GParted. The root drive is also about 10% free, which is about 15GB.

But at reboot I just got a notice that the root filesystem only had 4MB free. Ive seen systems complain about "low" at 10% before, but I cant figure out where 4MB comes from. And every download fails the first time due to low disk space, but the downloads folder is mounted to a drive with hundreds of GB free.

Im on LMDE with cinamon desktop- 99% sure its Betsy.
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Moem
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Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by Moem »

- Can you show us a screenshot of what you're seeing in GParted?
- Have you checked for large numbers of installed kernels that you're not using?
Image

If your issue is solved, kindly indicate that by editing the first post in the topic, and adding [SOLVED] to the title. Thanks!
gordon.cooke

Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by gordon.cooke »

Here is sda and sdb
sda.png
sdb1.png
sdb2.png
gordon.cooke

Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by gordon.cooke »

and sdc and sdd. Guess I was a little wrong- sdd is only a 1TB drive, but still ~250GB free
sdc.png
sdd.png
gordon.cooke

Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by gordon.cooke »

You can also see that whenin download folder- it reports 122.4GB free (yet downloads fail due to space)
Screenshot from 2018-03-24 14-12-17.png
But the root filesystem only shows 520k!
Screenshot from 2018-03-24 14-12-40.png
gordon.cooke

Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by gordon.cooke »

output of df

Code: Select all

Filesystem      1K-blocks       Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2       135522504  128614500       768 100% /
udev                10240          0     10240   0% /dev
tmpfs              807888       1336    806552   1% /run
tmpfs                5120          4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs             4892360      58308   4834052   2% /run/shm
/dev/sda1         2015824     120424   1793000   7% /boot
/dev/sdb1      2884152536 2618117052 119505848  96% /mnt/storage
/dev/sdc1      2884152536 2607603684 130019216  96% /mnt/mediaB
/dev/sdd1       961301832  674753076 237694332  74% /mnt/mediaC
tmpfs             4892360         16   4892344   1% /tmp
cgroup                 12          0        12   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
cgmfs                 100          0       100   0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs              807888         32    807856   1% /run/user/1000
So it seems the root (sda2) is whats low and looks like a few temp filesystems. I dont know what they do (if anyone can explian) but I guess they eat up space.
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Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by Arch_Enemy »

gordon.cooke wrote: Sat Mar 24, 2018 11:57 am Been having an issue for awhile of notices about low disk space- at boot, download fails due to no space, slow performance etc. But when I check GParted every drive has many GB free.

I have a bit if a complex setup. 4 drives. One is 150GB and has boot, root and swap. The other three are 3TB each and are just media- with folders mounted to ~/video, ~/pictures, etc. Those three are all about 250GB free in GParted. The root drive is also about 10% free, which is about 15GB.

But at reboot I just got a notice that the root filesystem only had 4MB free. Ive seen systems complain about "low" at 10% before, but I cant figure out where 4MB comes from. And every download fails the first time due to low disk space, but the downloads folder is mounted to a drive with hundreds of GB free.

Im on LMDE with cinamon desktop- 99% sure its Betsy.
The root filesystem is where the mp directory is stored, so if you have a lot of temp files open it really chews up the disk space.

On the other disks, do you have a lot of smaller files? The smaller files take up so many blocks, and once a block is partially used it is considered full.
Your file managers and other utilities only look at complete blocks, so what you're being told is the available size counting only complete blocks.

Apparently, gparted and some other disk utilities calculate the amount of actual free space, including the empty space in a partially used block. I noticed the same thing a while ago, that gparted and some other utilities told me I had a gig or more free, when file managers were telling me I had under a gig available.
I have travelled 37629424162.9 miles in my lifetime

One thing I would suggest, create a partition as a 50G partition as /. Partition the rest as /Home. IF the system fails, reinstall and use the exact same username and all your 'stuff' comes back to you.
WharfRat

Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by WharfRat »

gordon.cooke,

You would get a better idea of free space with df -h
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Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by Flemur »

gordon.cooke wrote: Tue Mar 27, 2018 1:52 pm output of df

Code: Select all

Filesystem      1K-blocks       Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2       135522504  128614500       768 100% /

/dev/sdb1      2884152536 2618117052 119505848  96% /mnt/storage
/dev/sdc1      2884152536 2607603684 130019216  96% /mnt/mediaB
/dev/sdd1       961301832  674753076 237694332  74% /mnt/mediaC
So it seems the root (sda2) is whats low and looks like a few temp filesystems. I dont know what they do (if anyone can explian) but I guess they eat up space.
Your "/" (sda2) is filled.

I'm guessing that you didn't actually have some of the other partitions mounted to, say, ~/video, and you've downloaded files into those mountpoints when they were just directories.

These commands will tell you more:

Code: Select all

mountpoint ~/video
(and your other ~/whatevers which are supposed to be mountpoints and not directories)

EDIT: I just noticed that none of your partitions are mounted to ~/video or ~/anythingelse.
"The other three are 3TB each and are just media- with folders mounted to ~/video, ~/pictures, etc"

Code: Select all

du /home | sort -n
and

Code: Select all

du / | sort -n
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] if/when it is solved!
Your data and OS are backed up....right?
gordon.cooke

Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by gordon.cooke »

Flemur wrote: Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:40 pm I'm guessing that you didn't actually have some of the other partitions mounted to, say, ~/video, and you've downloaded files into those mountpoints when they were just directories.
Good point. Looks like I didnt explain it right. The whole drives are mounted to those mountpoints (mediaB for example) and then I have the folders from the drive set to other folders inside home using fstab. But that is a good point about perhaps some files dumped into the root drive if the mounts werent working at a certain time.

I used du to check the home directory. The total is 4.4T. But I did find a big folder of 45GB of VMs sitting in my home which doesnt seem to be in one of the folder set off to my storage drive.
Arch_Enemy wrote: Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:14 pm Apparently, gparted and some other disk utilities calculate the amount of actual free space, including the empty space in a partially used block.
Ahhhhh.... reporting unused blocks versus bits of space. That makes sense to me.
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Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by Flemur »

gordon.cooke wrote: Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:15 pmThe whole drives are mounted to those mountpoints (mediaB for example) and then I have the folders from the drive set to other folders inside home using fstab.
That sounds like links, which aren't defined in fstab.
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] if/when it is solved!
Your data and OS are backed up....right?
gordon.cooke

Re: Notices about low disk space but gparted shows GBs free

Post by gordon.cooke »

I moved that folder off to another drive and the problems seem to have gone away. So seems fixed and full root drive was the issue. I ordered a larger drive and will migrate over when I get a chance this week.

Thanks everyone.
Flemur wrote: Tue Mar 27, 2018 9:34 pm That sounds like links, which aren't defined in fstab.
Well, its definately set up by my fstab file. Whatever its called.
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