<SOLVED>Is Serena supposed to take 33 gigs?

[jeannacav]

I just performed a clean install of serena then followed that with update manager.
I lost my partitions and the OS is taking up 33g.
This can't be right! Is it?

The full story:

I have been happily using Cinnamon (1.8, I think) since 2013, but it was no longer being serviced so I tried to upgrade it.
First I updated and there were no new updates.
Then, I made a backup.
The upgrade went along til 3/4 through and announced that it had failed and maybe I had an unstable system.

So, using a live dvd, I clean-installed serena 18.1 64 bit.
I am using an acer with amd 64 bit hardware.
(back in 2009 I wiped off the microsoft and installed jaunty jackalope onto a hard drive with 3 partitions. sda sdb and the swap -sdc?, I forget)
I checked the partitions before starting and they were OK.

clean install:
I installed with the choice that allows me to pick a partition for the os installation so it could be a clean install into the os partition sda.
I was asked if I wanted to dual boot with 'trusty' and 'serena'. Since the upgrade had failed I was surprised to see this choice. It should have been 'precise' if anything was still on there.
I said no, just serena
The installation took a really long time but otherwise seemed OK. in that it booted and seemed to function as well.
Then I poked the update manager and did a very very big update.
I think it took over 2 hours to update. I watched lots of ubuntu 4... kernels being brought up and installed. Several times there was a message that the locale was not available . But finally it was over and seemed ok.
except NO DATA!

Then:
When I rebooted I checked the partitions and they were all down!! ... and the system was taking up 33 gigs. (and only the new os was on there... no data.

I can, of course, restore from that backup but...

I want to reinstall first before I restore from that backup, UNLESS this is how it is supposed to be (i.e. 33 gigs and all partitions are down). Judging from other queries, I think something went wrong.
AND I want those partitions back if possible.

Thank you for helping,

jeanna

[Habitual]

jeanna:
Welcome to the Mint Forums.

We will (eventually?) need this output from terminal.

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inxi -Fsz -c0 | pastebin

and paste the link back here.

Thanks!

[jeannacav]

OK, here that is:

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ginala@ginala-Aspire-5517 ~ $ inxi -Fsz -c0 | pastebin
https://gist.github.com/5f05c72544c72a202e6c448428d946d5

huh? an internet address?

jeanna

[Flemur]

huh? an internet address?

It's one of those new-fangled cloud things.

So yeah:

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Partition: ID-1: / size: 145G used: 31G (23%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1

and the OS is usually < 10G - though you might have data files (music, etc) under /home.

This should show where it's being used:

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sudo du -hd 1 / 

or

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sudo du -d 1 / | sort -n

will order by size, largest last. (Don't worry about errors from /run or /proc)

There's also a graphical disk-usage program:

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baobab

[jeannacav]

OK here we go...

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ginala@ginala-Aspire-5517 ~ $ Partition: ID-1: / size: 145G used: 31G (23%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

then:

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ginala@ginala-Aspire-5517 ~ $ sudo du -d 1 / | sort -n
du: cannot access '/run/user/1000/gvfs': Permission denied
du: cannot access '/proc/3675/task/3675/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '/proc/3675/task/3675/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '/proc/3675/fd/3': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '/proc/3675/fdinfo/3': No such file or directory
0	/proc
0	/sys
4	/cdrom
4	/lib64
4	/mnt
4	/opt
4	/srv
8	/media
16	/lost+found
60	/tmp
1188	/dev
5604	/run
7968	/root
16288	/bin
17724	/sbin
25856	/etc
110852	/boot
591180	/home
651876	/lib
933600	/var
4518056	/usr
9041600	/copyorbackup
16517596	/.Trash-1000
32439496	/

and just for good luck:

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ginala@ginala-Aspire-5517 ~ $ sudo du -hd 1 / 
[sudo] password for ginala: 
16K	/lost+found
637M	/lib
8.0K	/media
1.2M	/dev
60K	/tmp
4.4G	/usr
8.7G	/copyorbackup
du: cannot access '/run/user/1000/gvfs': Permission denied
5.5M	/run
4.0K	/srv
16M	/bin
26M	/etc
4.0K	/opt
du: cannot access '/proc/3671/task/3671/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '/proc/3671/task/3671/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '/proc/3671/fd/3': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '/proc/3671/fdinfo/3': No such file or directory
0	/proc
912M	/var
18M	/sbin
109M	/boot
578M	/home
16G	/.Trash-1000
0	/sys
4.0K	/lib64
7.8M	/root
4.0K	/cdrom
4.0K	/mnt
31G	/

thanks for your help,
jeanna

[jeannacav]

AHA!

I see where a lot of gigs are.
In the trash?

First the error message at the top sez I do not have permission. hmmm. why not?

so here is that error message:

Error opening directory '/tmp/systemd-private-44cd67a4e9c04a1fa90a634f5be42c3d-rtkit-daemon.service-xY9Oco': Permission denied

the .trash file has 16.9 gigs and the file called copy or backup which was sposed to be on a thumb drive (and btw is) has 9.3 gigs and the usr file has 4,6 gigs.

so maybe the extra gigs are found.
What should I do?
and what about the partitions?

oh this is looking promising.

jeanna

[jeannacav]

Just to be clear.
Those high gig files are not available to me.
They are not in the trash folder that I can get to and I do not see them in any other place that I can get to.

jeanna

[gold_finger]

When you installed 18.1, did you by any chance forget to check the box(es) to format the partition(s) you chose for install. That would be my guess for two reasons:

1. "/.Trash-1000" wouldn't be there with 16.5GB if partition was formatted during install.
2. You've got a mount point called "/copyorbackup" listed in the output. If I understand you correctly, that's a USB stick you have attached to system. Thing is, unless you created that mount point after booting into new install of Mint and mounted USB stick there, you shouldn't even have that mount point listed after a fresh install.

Both of above could happen if you installed over old Mint without formatting the partition(s).

If that is what you did, you might be better off re-installing and make sure you check box to format the root partition. If you have a separate partition for /home and data files you want to keep are there, do not check box to format that.

P.s.

Those high gig files are not available to me.
They are not in the trash folder that I can get to and I do not see them in any other place that I can get to.

That trash folder is a hidden folder directly under / (root). Open file manager as root/admin, then enable showing hidden files by either hitting <Ctrl>+H, or using menu View -> Show Hidden Files. Navigate to root and you should now be able to see it and delete it (as root).

You can also see and remove it from command line. To see it do:

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ls -a /

To remove it:

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sudo rm -R /.Trash-1000

(NOTE: in command, there are no spaces in "/.Trash-1000")

Just to reiterate though: you would probably be best off just re-installing and formatting partition(s). There could be other things floating around from old install that may end up causing mysterious issues later on.

[jeannacav]

totally strange.
That trash file is listed as a run file , but when I went to remove it I am told it doesn't even exist.

I will reinstall and figure all that leftover will be wiped.
I need to format the 33 gigs though don't I?
I would not like to see them again.
I figure that all the data I want from the past should be available on that thumb drive called copy or backup. (and no it was not in the computer when I installed this mess).

OK

Thank you for your help.

I will do a clean install... again!
mmm bye for now!
jeanna

[jeannacav]

Seems that this clea reinstall has cleaned up my big problem.

Thanks all of you for your help

jeanna

[gold_finger]

Great -- glad to hear it worked out.

Quick Note: to mark this as <SOLVED> you need to go to your first post on this thread and edit title on that one. That's the only way it shows up as solved when people are browsing through the list of threads under various headings ("Installation & Boot" heading in this case). Editing title elsewhere will not get seen unless people read through all posts on thread before it.