Filesystem has 0 bytes

[osprey]

I would like to repair what the problem is in order to learn from this situation.

So I tried to find what booting into text prompt means and I found this command: sudo nano /etc/default/grub. Is that correct?

To boot to a text prompt, have a look here at the case A.

How To Boot To Console (Text) Mode Using Debian / Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux / Manjaro And More

This article explains how to boot a Linux distribution like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux / Manjaro, etc., in console mode, either temporarily or permanently.

www.linuxuprising.com

Once you have booted to the text prompt, you can login with your username and password. If the system works it would useful to know the disk usage of the home directory. Run the following if possible whilst in your home directory and paste the output here:

du -sh

 

[imakeper]

To boot to a text prompt, have a look here at the case A.

How To Boot To Console (Text) Mode Using Debian / Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux / Manjaro And More

This article explains how to boot a Linux distribution like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux / Manjaro, etc., in console mode, either temporarily or permanently.

www.linuxuprising.com

Once you have booted to the text prompt, you can login with your username and password. If the system works it would useful to know the disk usage of the home directory. Run the following if possible whilst in your home directory and paste the output here:

du -sh

 

[imakeper]

When I hold down the shift key as the computer is starting it takes me to a screen that has two choices which are Advanced Options for Zorin or UEFI Firmware Settings.

When I go into the Advanced Options it gives me four choices:
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-139-generic
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-139-generic (recovery mode)
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-138-generic
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-138-generic (recovery mode)

I assume this is what they mean in the instructions "with the first entry from the menu selected" press the e key. I did this and it then showed a prompt in the upper left corner. The first line says Zorin OS 16.3 and has my name and my computer name.
The second line says first my name, then my computer info and ends with the word "login".

I don't see a line that starts with Linux.

Well, something happened. I thought I'd just put in my login info and I pressed enter and it asked for password. I didn't do anything but press enter and it took me to the regular Zorin screen with my desktop. So it seems we're on the right path.

A prompt said 4 applications were updated.

So now where am I at in the recovery process now? Should I run the command du -sh or does this change now?

 

[osprey]

When I hold down the shift key as the computer is starting it takes me to a screen that has two choices which are Advanced Options for Zorin or UEFI Firmware Settings.

When I go into the Advanced Options it gives me four choices:
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-139-generic
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-139-generic (recovery mode)
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-138-generic
Zorin, with Linux 5.15.0-138-generic (recovery mode)

I assume this is what they mean in the instructions "with the first entry from the menu selected" press the e key. I did this and it then showed a prompt in the upper left corner. The first line says Zorin OS 16.3 and has my name and my computer name.
The second line says first my name, then my computer info and ends with the word "login".

I don't see a line that starts with Linux.

Well, something happened. I thought I'd just put in my login info and I pressed enter and it asked for password. I didn't do anything but press enter and it took me to the regular Zorin screen with my desktop. So it seems we're on the right path.

A prompt said 4 applications were updated.

So now where am I at in the recovery process now? Should I run the command du -sh or does this change now?

It sounds like you missed the text login, that you booted into a normal GUI session, and that your machine updates automatically.

What is meant by "with the first entry from the menu selected" is that when the grub menu appears, by default the first entry in the list is highlighted, which means it's the default selection so that if you press the enter key, the machine will boot to that entry, that is, boot with the kernel associated with that entry.

Booting to a text prompt however, is different. Perhaps have a look here: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/boot-linux-command-line-mode, which describes the same process as the earlier link but shows a better display of what you are supposed to see on screen.

In any case, if you have booted to a GUI and the system is working, you can open a terminal and run the disk usage command from your home directory: du -sh, and paste the results here. If the machine doesn't work, then I would go back and read the instructions from either of the links provided and try and boot to a text prompt on a console.

 

[imakeper]

It sounds like you missed the text login, that you booted into a normal GUI session, and that your machine updates automatically.

What is meant by "with the first entry from the menu selected" is that when the grub menu appears, by default the first entry in the list is highlighted, which means it's the default selection so that if you press the enter key, the machine will boot to that entry, that is, boot with the kernel associated with that entry.

Booting to a text prompt however, is different. Perhaps have a look here: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/boot-linux-command-line-mode, which describes the same process as the earlier link but shows a better display of what you are supposed to see on screen.

In any case, if you have booted to a GUI and the system is working, you can open a terminal and run the disk usage command from your home directory: du -sh, and paste the results here. If the machine doesn't work, then I would go back and read the instructions from either of the links provided and try and boot to a text prompt on a console.

I ran the code and it generated a line that says 54G and that's it and took me back to the prompt again.

The message now says there is 965.0MB space left now. Every time it shows up it's got a different amount of space left.

 

[osprey]

I ran the code and it generated a line that says 54G and that's it and took me back to the prompt again.

The message now says there is 965.0MB space left now. Every time it shows up it's got a different amount of space left.

Thanks for that output ... 54G in the /home directory. The question then arises as to how much of that you can delete. If you are able to delete a substantial portion of that total, then your system would be able to function more efficiently. In figures, 50G out of the nearly 200G on the system is 25% which, if deleted would have the system running with 75% of disk usage which would be fine. It's possible to back up everything you may not wish to part with onto an external drive or a usb. After getting the system working the way you want it, then you can consider returning the backed up data if you wished to.

A couple of other questions:
What's on the nvme disk in the 200+G that is not the zorin installation?
Could run this command (as root if necessary) and paste the output here:

fdisk -l

Is the machine working from the GUI at the moment?

 

[wizardfromoz]

@imakeper - one of the things you should be considering is EOL - End of Life.

Zorin 16.3 has an EOL of 31st May 2025 - 10 days from now.

You should be looking at 17.3 by now.

Wizard

 

[wizardfromoz]

I have Zorin 16.3 pro and...

Or does that have an extended shelf life? I do not pay for my Linux.

I took Windows off my computer when I installed the Zorin OS.

In any event, I think I would be looking at a full (re-)install of 17.3, and cut your losses in terms of time taken to get back to working order.

If you have significant quantities of personal data to safeguard, from eg $HOME , make allowance for that first.

Just my two cents.

Wizard

 

[imakeper]

Just like before

Thanks for that output ... 54G in the /home directory. The question then arises as to how much of that you can delete. If you are able to delete a substantial portion of that total, then your system would be able to function more efficiently. In figures, 50G out of the nearly 200G on the system is 25% which, if deleted would have the system running with 75% of disk usage which would be fine. It's possible to back up everything you may not wish to part with onto an external drive or a usb. After getting the system working the way you want it, then you can consider returning the backed up data if you wished to.

A couple of other questions:
What's on the nvme disk in the 200+G that is not the zorin installation?
Could run this command (as root if necessary) and paste the output here:

fdisk -l

Is the machine working from the GUI at the moment?

Thanks for that output ... 54G in the /home directory. The question then arises as to how much of that you can delete. If you are able to delete a substantial portion of that total, then your system would be able to function more efficiently. In figures, 50G out of the nearly 200G on the system is 25% which, if deleted would have the system running with 75% of disk usage which would be fine. It's possible to back up everything you may not wish to part with onto an external drive or a usb. After getting the system working the way you want it, then you can consider returning the backed up data if you wished to.

A couple of other questions:
What's on the nvme disk in the 200+G that is not the zorin installation?
Could run this command (as root if necessary) and paste the output here:

fdisk -l

Is the machine working from the GUI at the moment?

The last time I talked to the other forum they gave me command codes to run to clean everything out. I did this and put the files in trash. There were many of them. I just went to get a list of them to tell you what was already trashed. Just as it did before, it was sitting there with the home page for zorin on and the filesystem low space error message and when I clicked in the Zorin box on the left lower hand corner and chose HOME files the computer went back to not being accessible anymore. It went to a black screen with my computer logo on it. So that's two times I've tried to access the zorin info from that box and it's taken me back to a black screen with my computer's logo.

I then tried to go through the steps I did before by choosing the first entry and then pressing e and it didn't do anything but leave a prompt flashing off and on in the upper left corner.

I ran the fdisk -l and I attached the results.

At this point I'm completely confused. In order to upgrade to zorin 17.3 it has to be able to get to the update part of zorin.

 

[imakeper]

Or does that have an extended shelf life? I do not pay for my Linux.



In any event, I think I would be looking at a full (re-)install of 17.3, and cut your losses in terms of time taken to get back to working order.

If you have significant quantities of personal data to safeguard, from eg $HOME , make allowance for that first.

Just my two cents.

Wizard

This is sounding more and more inviting and may be my only alternative. I have a thumb drive but I don't know how to put my personal info files onto the thumb drive if I can't access anything.

 

[KGIII]

I don't know how to put my personal info files onto the thumb drive if I can't access anything.

In this case, I'd recommend a 2nd USB thumb drive that had the installation media on it - that way you could use the live version of the distro. You boot to that USB drive and it should mount your internal drive automatically. You'd then open a file manager and navigate to /home/<your_user_name>. From there, things should be obvious. You should see the Downloads folder, the Pictures folder, the Documents folder, and all of that sort of stuff.

You can then copy/paste the important data to the 2nd USB thumb drive.

 

[osprey]

This is sounding more and more inviting and may be my only alternative. I have a thumb drive but I don't know how to put my personal info files onto the thumb drive if I can't access anything.

Okay. The suggestions by @wizardfromoz in posts #27 and #28 to re-install the latest version of the distro echo my suggestion in post #19. Since you opted to try and continue in post #20, I tried to begin on that route. Now that the nature of the task might look a bit too involved, you can always revert to the new installation option and there are good reasons for doing that. I do support the wiz's option.

That said, there are a few observations that can be made for the record.

Moving files to Trash, unfortunately, doesn't free up space on the disk because it just moves them into a directory which still takes up space until the "Trash Bin" (if that's what it's called) is itself emptied by deliberate action.

Thanks for the fdisk output. It confirms the size of the disk is 500G and that the installation is only using half of that disk. If there is no purpose for half the disk to be unallocated, in a new installation, you could use the whole disk which would have any disk usage problems disappear ... until you filled it up again of course But that could take a while, maybe.

To save the current files on the current installation, the suggestion by @KGIII in post #31 is the way to go in my view. If you need more detailed info on how to proceed with that write here.

 

[imakeper]

Okay. The suggestions by @wizardfromoz in posts #27 and #28 to re-install the latest version of the distro echo my suggestion in post #19. Since you opted to try and continue in post #20, I tried to begin on that route. Now that the nature of the task might look a bit too involved, you can always revert to the new installation option and there are good reasons for doing that. I do support the wiz's option.

That said, there are a few observations that can be made for the record.

Moving files to Trash, unfortunately, doesn't free up space on the disk because it just moves them into a directory which still takes up space until the "Trash Bin" (if that's what it's called) is itself emptied by deliberate action.

Thanks for the fdisk output. It confirms the size of the disk is 500G and that the installation is only using half of that disk. If there is no purpose for half the disk to be unallocated, in a new installation, you could use the whole disk which would have any disk usage problems disappear ... until you filled it up again of course But that could take a while, maybe.

To save the current files on the current installation, the suggestion by @KGIII in post #31 is the way to go in my view. If you need more detailed info on how to proceed with that write here.

An alternative method of saving the files is to make a byte-for-byte copy of the root partition onto an external disk or a usb, and then later mount it from the new installation and find the files on it that you wish to save. The external disk would need to be at least 250G to be safe. Usbs of 256g are available.

But what is filling up the space; is it updates that are done that add files, is it something I can avoid in the future?

I know this will be a stupid question, so brace yourself, but does anything I do on firefox or when I'm on the internet affect or add anything to the zorin files? Like, if I don't clear my cache or cookies often, would that be a problem with Zorin files being taken up?

My printer went out also and my new one is coming today. I need to get that up and running too and linked to my computer. You know the saying "When it rains, it pours",

Thank you for your help everyone!

One more stupid question, if I may be so bold, I had to get rid of the battery in this computer and it only runs by a power cord. What has happened now off and on my computer will just quit working, just turns off, and I have to unplug the power cord at the computer port and plug it back in and it turns on just fine again.

I found the solution to it's suddenly turning off by looking around on the internet and I found an asus person who said the computer can build up a charge that has to be dispensed with by unplugging it and plugging it back in. So could something like this have an effect on the zorin files? I told you it was probably stupid.

And lastly, I'm going to do a deep dive into all that has been told or offered in the other forum and here and apply anything I might have done before that worked temporarily. I'm going to run all the commands to see if the computer reacts any differently. If all of this fails, I will ask you for help in upgrading and saving files onto my usb thumb drive. I will take note of #31 and use that.

I did put a backup of all the files on a usb drive and I have the install usb drive I used to install zorin in the first place.

 

[osprey]

But what is filling up the space; is it updates that are done that add files, is it something I can avoid in the future?

I know this will be a stupid question, so brace yourself, but does anything I do on firefox or when I'm on the internet affect or add anything to the zorin files? Like, if I don't clear my cache or cookies often, would that be a problem with Zorin files being taken up?

My printer went out also and my new one is coming today. I need to get that up and running too and linked to my computer. You know the saying "When it rains, it pours",

Thank you for your help everyone!

One more stupid question, if I may be so bold, I had to get rid of the battery in this computer and it only runs by a power cord. What has happened now off and on my computer will just quit working, just turns off, and I have to unplug the power cord at the computer port and plug it back in and it turns on just fine again.

I found the solution to it's suddenly turning off by looking around on the internet and I found an asus person who said the computer can build up a charge that has to be dispensed with by unplugging it and plugging it back in. So could something like this have an effect on the zorin files? I told you it was probably stupid.

And lastly, I'm going to do a deep dive into all that has been told or offered in the other forum and here and apply anything I might have done before that worked temporarily. I'm going to run all the commands to see if the computer reacts any differently. If all of this fails, I will ask you for help in upgrading and saving files onto my usb thumb drive. I will take note of #31 and use that.

I did put a backup of all the files on a usb drive and I have the install usb drive I used to install zorin in the first place.

If you have a backup of all files, then you are in an excellent position to do a new installation.

The power situation described where the computer will just quit working despite being run from the mains, is not usual in my experience. There may be an electrical issue with the computer but I can't say more. Certainly I've run a laptop from mains power in the past without an intermittent "quit working" issue. It may be useful to check the memory with the memtest86+ app from a live disk. It's also possible to check the health of the drive from the live disk. Problems with intermittent stops are generally hardware problems.

On the question of what is filling up the space apart from your own use of the computer, if the installation is configured to have automatic updates, then such updates will gradually increase the disk usage over time. It's often the case that newer versions of software are larger in size than the versions they replace because developers may include newer capabilities into the software or other improvements that involve more code. Newer versions may also have newer dependencies so, for example, they may need newer library files, so the number of files may increase as well taking up more space again. Automatic updating can be controlled by being stopped and changed to manual updating which the user controls. For manual updating, the user updates and upgrades when it suits them.

 

[imakeper]

If you have a backup of all files, then you are in an excellent position to do a new installation.

The power situation described where the computer will just quit working despite being run from the mains, is not usual in my experience. There may be an electrical issue with the computer but I can't say more. Certainly I've run a laptop from mains power in the past without an intermittent "quit working" issue. It may be useful to check the memory with the memtest86+ app from a live disk. It's also possible to check the health of the drive from the live disk. Problems with intermittent stops are generally hardware problems.

On the question of what is filling up the space apart from your own use of the computer, if the installation is configured to have automatic updates, then such updates will gradually increase the disk usage over time. It's often the case that newer versions of software are larger in size than the versions they replace because developers may include newer capabilities into the software or other improvements that involve more code. Newer versions may also have newer dependencies so, for example, they may need newer library files, so the number of files may increase as well taking up more space again. Automatic updating can be controlled by being stopped and changed to manual updating which the user controls. For manual updating, the user updates and upgrades when it suits them.

I posted a note to the Zorin people because it gives you a unique code when you buy the zorin os 16.3 pro. With that code it says to contact them with any installation questions. I figured this was an installation problem of sorts.

Just like you've said, they suggest a clean install. But the problem is I can't get anywhere to do anything. I can only use the grub BIOS menu. When I do choose the first entry and enter e I can get back to my regular home screen with the zorin box in the left lower corner. But if I try to deviate anywhere off the home screen my screen goes black and I'm not in the home screen page anymore. I have to force my computer to shutdown, choose advanced options and go into the recovery and I can use the root shell prompt. I put my backup thumb drive in that I made when I installed the zorin 16.3 but there isn't anywhere to go to get to the contents that I know of.

I went through grub BIOS and recovery and the root shell prompt and put my thumb drive in and found the command sudo dmesg from a site that said to try this if linux doesn't recognize the thumb drive. When I ran it the whole page scrolled with a lot of info showing the thumb drive had the info on it.

Can I do all I have to do to reinstall zorin using the root shell prompt?

 

[KGIII]

But the problem is I can't get anywhere to do anything.

Do you have a blank USB thumb drive, the ability to download an .iso file, and a computer with which you can write the .iso file to the USB thumb drive?

 

[imakeper]

Do you have a blank USB thumb drive, the ability to download an .iso file, and a computer with which you can write the .iso file to the USB thumb drive?

I just got a 32GB thumb drive and I think I can access the original download zorin sent me. Is the .iso file like what balancha does or is. I think that's the name.

 

[KGIII]

Is the .iso file like what balancha does or is. I think that's the name.

You got it. You use BalenaEtcher to write the .iso file to the USB thumbdrive. You can't just copy and paste the .iso file, you have to use something to write (burn) the data in the .iso file onto the thumbdrive.

 

[imakeper]

If you could be patient with me would you help me restart the whole process to find out and fix the 0 disk space left problem.

At first I wanted to fix the problem to learn how to avoid it in the future, etc. I've decided to take this route now. When I thought I wanted to reinstall I had to look up what mounting a thumb drive means or what a "live" thumb drive is. When I got instructions on how to find something out or how to see what info certain commands bring up I get bogged down. It's not you, it's me. It's the way my brain processes info which is different than others.

I looked up the command to access the Disk Usage Analyzer through root shell prompt and it said to run du -h and then du -sh /. Well the lines kept scrolling and scrolling and the biggest thing I noticed was that Timeshift info took up at least 20 seconds to get through. I couldn't scroll up to see the other lines. When I tried to scroll up using the up arrow it repopulated one of the previous commands I'd put in so I coudn't check the rest.

I had read somewhere that Timeshift takes up a lot of disk space. I think this may be something to look into. Is there a way to delete the timeshift files to see if that works? And how to achieve this in any other way to see if this is the problem.

So this is the first thing I need to find out and I'll go step by step, one at a time. I printed out all of the instructions so far and I can refer to them to help me understand.

 

[osprey]

If you could be patient with me would you help me restart the whole process to find out and fix the 0 disk space left problem.

At first I wanted to fix the problem to learn how to avoid it in the future, etc. I've decided to take this route now. When I thought I wanted to reinstall I had to look up what mounting a thumb drive means or what a "live" thumb drive is. When I got instructions on how to find something out or how to see what info certain commands bring up I get bogged down. It's not you, it's me. It's the way my brain processes info which is different than others.

I looked up the command to access the Disk Usage Analyzer through root shell prompt and it said to run du -h and then du -sh /. Well the lines kept scrolling and scrolling and the biggest thing I noticed was that Timeshift info took up at least 20 seconds to get through. I couldn't scroll up to see the other lines. When I tried to scroll up using the up arrow it repopulated one of the previous commands I'd put in so I coudn't check the rest.

I had read somewhere that Timeshift takes up a lot of disk space. I think this may be something to look into. Is there a way to delete the timeshift files to see if that works? And how to achieve this in any other way to see if this is the problem.

So this is the first thing I need to find out and I'll go step by step, one at a time. I printed out all of the instructions so far and I can refer to them to help me understand.

There's a reasonably comprehensive description of installing zorin from zorin's own help guide here: https://help.zorin.com/docs/getting-started/install-zorin-os/

The optimal aspect of such a guide is that it can provide a reference point for any installation issue that a user can encounter. For example, if the user is following the guide, and has a problem, then they can indicate the exact point in the guide where they are having the problem. Helpers will then know the situation more clearly because the route being followed to installation is laid out in the steps that need to be taken.

If you follow this route, then you can ignore all the steps which are noted in the guide as "optional" so that you can at least get a system up and running, and then later consider the optional aspects. I understand you already have the files you wish to save backed up, so that's one optional aspect you have covered.

To start from the start again, the first thing that one needs is an .iso file of zorin which is downloaded from the zorin website, and a computer system that can run balena etcher to write it to a usb.