I am running Kubuntu 14.04 and it is eating HD space

U

URDRWHO

Guest
Last weekend I started received a message that I have no space remaining to boot into the system.
Today I gparted a partition to add 1.4 gigs to the allow it to boot. It booted and worked but it kept filling the hard drive to the point that I have 156 megs remaining.

Plus each time I log in (this started last week) I boot in as a temporary guest.

I don't have authentication privledge.

I've tried to change allow-guest=false in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf but it won't let gedit save the file.

I am fed up and about ready to reinstall. It has been up and running since march 2014 and if I remember I had a heck of a video problem and Wifi install on the old HP pavallion zv5000 and I am not looking forward to going through it.
 


You can't even log it as root? If not, I think I'd boot on a DVD or flash drive so I could look around the filesystem and see what could be deleted safely. If you get enough free space usable again maybe you could log in properly. Or at least save important stuff before you reinstall.

This link (http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10...-do-when-the-drive-on-your-linux-box-is-full/) has a lot of helpful suggestions, but many of them need the OS to be running.

How much space did you start with? I just saw my Downloads folder has almost 80 GB in it, and I think I could do without all of it if I were in a tight spot like you are. Good luck!
 
I am not a power user and don't have much on it. I've been running for a year on 10 gig and 1 gig swap.

I was having some video problems and now those are gone. For some time now I haven't been able to reboot using the GUI and I would need to move to the terminal and use terminal commands.

Today I used up over a gig, someplace but where?

I use firefox but had chrome installed. I un-installed chrome, I un-installed pictures that were in my folders, I increased the partition and like a shark Kubuntu gobbled up all the space.

I used Knoppix to try and delete some things in folders like the tmp folder but the files are locked in read only (or something).

I have nothig else to delete, I have no more room to expand the partition, even if I did I have no rights. I can't even remove or add programs.

Is it possible that I have two desktops?

I saw two root folders but the one was totally empty.

All of my problems started last November after an update.

Things I don't want to happen if I need to reinstall

1. Loose my grub so I can't dual boot into XP
2. Loose my Thunderbird profile and mail
3. Loose my Firefox history, etc.

What I have learned. Set upgrade to only upgrade on rare occasions.

I've had windows go down but have always got it back up with either restore or using the install disk for a repaid. I don't think Kubuntu has either of them?

This isn't the first time I've tried to use the OS. Years ago I had Ubuntu installed on a dual boot. It just seems that every time the OS cracks and falls. I guess if you are a sys admin it is all good. I don't think all PPA's are created equal?

From what I've read it is rather safe to delete files with the extension gz. I don't even get the rights to delete them.

Tried booting in with recovery but I get the message --- "call to inusertemp failed (temporary directories full?). Check you installation."


You can't even log it as root? If not, I think I'd boot on a DVD or flash drive so I could look around the filesystem and see what could be deleted safely. If you get enough free space usable again maybe you could log in properly. Or at least save important stuff before you reinstall.

This link (http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10...-do-when-the-drive-on-your-linux-box-is-full/) has a lot of helpful suggestions, but many of them need the OS to be running.

How much space did you start with? I just saw my Downloads folder has almost 80 GB in it, and I think I could do without all of it if I were in a tight spot like you are. Good luck!
 
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It sounds like your installation is pretty messed up, and I doubt I can find any quick solution for you. Your other recent post sounds like you are about ready to re-install to get past this problem. And that probably will be the quicker resolution (except for the video/wifi problems you think may return).

So, to look at your essential requirements to re-install:

1. A fresh install (of any distro) should build you a new GRUB that will recognize XP. But still you should backup anything on XP that is critically important to you in case something goes wrong. Stuff happens sometimes.

2/3. Saving your Thunderbird and Firefox are the same issue. All of the mail, history, settings, etc are stored in hidden folders in your home folder. Firefox is in the .mozilla folder, and Thunderbird is in the .thunderbird folder. You can copy these, even from a terminal, to a flash drive if your system detects the flash drive and mounts it.

But since your system is so crippled, you may need to boot on Knoppix and save those folders from there. If you aren't familiar with "hidden" folders, then we will go over that if needed.
 
Well the guru I spoke of took a remote look. He said he wasn't getting a fuzzy feeling with what he saw. I don't know where he found the room but he freed up almost 5 gigs. It took a while to get my Firefox and Thunderbird to play nice again with my saved profiles.

Not sure what was eating up the space? One of the last things I could do yesterday I changed the swappiness to 10 and wrote the change to the file. Since getting it cleaned up this morning, I haven't seen the eating monster. I've lost 1.5 gigs to the stuff that I re-installed but I still have 4 gigs free.

I started thinking that my system was messed up and the swap file wasn't going to the linux swap but was going to my root partition. Therefore it was eating space like crazy.

The guru said he cleaned out a lot of cache.

I tried some of the clean up yesterday but Knoppix seemed to be stopped from deleting the files.

I can now add and remove through Muron.

Now if only I could figure out how to make me be the account that Kubuntu boots to and not the temporary guest. To me a temporary guest means each time I reboot, I get stored cache someplace and with minimal HD space....that isn't good.

I had to reinstall the touchpad.

An odd thing is that I removed LlibreOffice writer but it still starts. Go figure on that one?




It sounds like your installation is pretty messed up, and I doubt I can find any quick solution for you. Your other recent post sounds like you are about ready to re-install to get past this problem. And that probably will be the quicker resolution (except for the video/wifi problems you think may return).

So, to look at your essential requirements to re-install:

1. A fresh install (of any distro) should build you a new GRUB that will recognize XP. But still you should backup anything on XP that is critically important to you in case something goes wrong. Stuff happens sometimes.

2/3. Saving your Thunderbird and Firefox are the same issue. All of the mail, history, settings, etc are stored in hidden folders in your home folder. Firefox is in the .mozilla folder, and Thunderbird is in the .thunderbird folder. You can copy these, even from a terminal, to a flash drive if your system detects the flash drive and mounts it.

But since your system is so crippled, you may need to boot on Knoppix and save those folders from there. If you aren't familiar with "hidden" folders, then we will go over that if needed.
 
Well the guru I spoke of took a remote look. He said he wasn't getting a fuzzy feeling with what he saw. I don't know where he found the room but he freed up almost 5 gigs. It took a while to get my Firefox and Thunderbird to play nice again with my saved profiles.

Not sure what was eating up the space? One of the last things I could do yesterday I changed the swappiness to 10 and wrote the change to the file. Since getting it cleaned up this morning, I haven't seen the eating monster. I've lost 1.5 gigs to the stuff that I re-installed but I still have 4 gigs free.

I started thinking that my system was messed up and the swap file wasn't going to the linux swap but was going to my root partition. Therefore it was eating space like crazy.

The guru said he cleaned out a lot of cache.

I tried some of the clean up yesterday but Knoppix seemed to be stopped from deleting the files.

I can now add and remove through Muron.

Now if only I could figure out how to make me be the account that Kubuntu boots to and not the temporary guest. To me a temporary guest means each time I reboot, I get stored cache someplace and with minimal HD space....that isn't good.

I had to reinstall the touchpad.

An odd thing is that I removed LlibreOffice writer but it still starts. Go figure on that one?

Happy to hear you have some breathing room now to work on your system. But since you still have issues (like logging in) I think you might still consider reinstalling before long. Now is a very good time to back up your .thunderbird and .mozilla folders, at least.

I may boot to Knoppix later and see if I have trouble deleting stuff. It seems like it should work well as a rescue disk and that shouldn't be a problem. But I have some other tasks that will keep me busy now for the rest of the week. (That "job" thing gets me for 12-hr shifts which start again tomorrow. Ugh.)

Not sure about LibreOffice Writer... that is weird. Maybe you had two copies installed?

Cheers!
 
I have no idea how or why it happened but I started thinking tonight (glass of wine in hand). I had been trying to edit my lightdm.conf file outside of the terminal. I wasn't getting the rights to make any changes.

I was fairly certain it was my problem with the temporary guest account logging in before me. Here is how it was written --

allow guest=true
autologin-guest=true
autologin-user=me the user

I knew I had to change that guest stuff to false but I couldn't do it the way I was doing it nor would Knoppix give me the rights to do it.

So a little bit ago I went through terminal commands, edited the file, changed the file, rebooted and it booted into me the user ...not the temporary guest.

I have no idea how or why it ever got changed. It was a ghostly experience but now it is fixed.


Happy to hear you have some breathing room now to work on your system. But since you still have issues (like logging in) I think you might still consider reinstalling before long. Now is a very good time to back up your .thunderbird and .mozilla folders, at least.

I may boot to Knoppix later and see if I have trouble deleting stuff. It seems like it should work well as a rescue disk and that shouldn't be a problem. But I have some other tasks that will keep me busy now for the rest of the week. (That "job" thing gets me for 12-hr shifts which start again tomorrow. Ugh.)

Not sure about LibreOffice Writer... that is weird. Maybe you had two copies installed?

Cheers!
 
I'm sure the glass of wine helped! :D Glad you have it working better, much better now. Maybe you won't have to reinstall after all. But keep an eye on your disk space, just in case!

Cheers!
 
Thanks

Very busy today at work and will read the article.

I've also been reading about removing the repository packages for Lubuntu and Ubuntu.

I filtered Lubuntu and there is nothing installed. Filtering Ubuntu and I see items that are installed. Things such as KDE configuration for Whoopsie.

The article is an old one and I'll need to give a lot of consideration to removing things.


http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/purekdeoneiric

If you have Kde functional again and want to run it lighter try my recommendation at the end of this article.

http://www.linux.org/threads/intro-to-kde.7369/

In other words:
sed -i 's/StartServer.*/StartServer=false/' ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc
reboot
 
I ran the terminal code but didn't get any response, nothing saying that it was incorrect script, nothing. Should I have seen some response from the terminal????

sed -i 's/StartServer.*/StartServer=false/' ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc

System has rebooted and I don't see anything different but maybe I shouldn't see any difference, just a box that uses fewer resources.

Looking at processes ----
I don't use these and they are running

Kopete memory is 12,056
Knotify4 memory is 11,544

If you have Kde functional again and want to run it lighter try my recommendation at the end of this article.

http://www.linux.org/threads/intro-to-kde.7369/

In other words:
sed -i 's/StartServer.*/StartServer=false/' ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc
reboot
 
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I ran the terminal code but didn't get any response, nothing saying that it was incorrect script, nothing. Should I have seen some response from the terminal????

sed -i 's/StartServer.*/StartServer=false/' ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc

System has rebooted and I don't see anything different but maybe I shouldn't see any difference, just a box that uses fewer resources.

No you wont see a response, you just edited the file ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc with sed. You need to log off or reboot for best results. This will disable the akondai server for your profile; your login only.
 
Tomorrow I have to ask the guy what he deleted to clear up space.

I did the code, I removed Kopete and Knotes, everything was going fine, the computer was rebooting ok. Then all of the sudden I saw my used HD space go from 68% to 70%....I had not done or changed anything.

Now I am back to no reboot. It is as though the computer goes to sleep / hibernates but won't reboot. The hard drive stops spinning, the power button light is still illuminated but there is no response.
I know that when it was working correctly I would see the word Kubuntu when it was shutting down but now that isn't happening.

Now that I know how to remove and replace Firefox and Thunderbird profiles I may just do the clean install.

Oh well it is no big deal because I don't boot shut down the computer that often.

I added a new user, gave the user auto log on and admin rights, took away auto log on and admin from me. It rebooted.

Now the new user has all default window decorations, etc. I did change the workspace appearance on my user. Hm????

Crap --- forget the theory I just tried to reboot from the new user and now I am staring at a black screen.

Logging off all users and rebooting. It rebooted twice in a row doing it. I know when it is going to work because I see a bunch of words about this or that on the left side of the screen. Waiting for this or that to stop. Every time I see the words I get a reboot.

On another note. Why do I get a bouncing gear when I boot into my account but the new account has no bouncing gear? What is with the bouncing????

No you wont see a response, you just edited the file ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc with sed. You need to log off or reboot for best results. This will disable the akondai server for your profile; your login only.
 
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I will try to help you soon I have to go work. I read this later sorry.
 
It seems (so far) that as long as I log out first, then reboot will work. Maybe there is something in cache that isn't cleared unless I log out?

I've used the above (log out first) protocol about 5 times and it is 100% accurate.

I will try to help you soon I have to go work. I read this later sorry.
 
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It seems (so far) that as long as I log out first, then reboot will work. Maybe there is something in cache that isn't cleared unless I log out?

I've used the above (log out first) protocol about 5 times and it is 100% accurate.
You have a lot of issues. If it was my computer I'd either say screw it format and reload or try to fix it. - Read your logs. Monitor the system with a monitoring tool so you can see cpu and memory usage and see what files/programs are using it. I would also use the du command on your file system to see where the data is accumulating.
I use "conky" for a system monitor, as well as a few others, and it should work just fine for what you need. Some of the top commands will be simple but helpful.

I think if you shut down the akonadi server in Kde you will get some relief. Not that it its the answer but I'd try it. I hard disk , mem , cpu issues with KDE and this took care it by turning off akonadi,
$cat ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc or
$grep StartServer ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc
See if StartServer is set to =false. Then do this for all profiles /home/users/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc
I really want you to try running Kde with the akonadi server off just so you can see how much memory and cpu is freed.

You have more issues then this. Probably all the repositories and unneeded add-ons created a nasty recipe of bad or malicious software.

I'd backup what you need and rebuild if it really is that bad.

Anyway good luck.
 
Thanks

Things are running OK and I think I'll just stay sitting where I am at the moment.

Using the DU command shows a quick note that some of the themes I was playing with are taking up quite a bit of space.

Also I see a bunch of stuff that all that I can assume is remaining from when I tried Wine?? where would this be
./.kde/share/apps/dolphin/view_properties/local/media/john/Windows main/

There is more after the windows main but for privacy I can't write it here. I thought maybe it was getting info from my external drive but I pulled the plug so it can't be that???

There's a lot of junk laying about!

You have a lot of issues. If it was my computer I'd either say screw it format and reload or try to fix it. - Read your logs. Monitor the system with a monitoring tool so you can see cpu and memory usage and see what files/programs are using it. I would also use the du command on your file system to see where the data is accumulating.
I use "conky" for a system monitor, as well as a few others, and it should work just fine for what you need. Some of the top commands will be simple but helpful.

I think if you shut down the akonadi server in Kde you will get some relief. Not that it its the answer but I'd try it. I hard disk , mem , cpu issues with KDE and this took care it by turning off akonadi,
$cat ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc or
$grep StartServer ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc
See if StartServer is set to =false. Then do this for all profiles /home/users/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc
I really want you to try running Kde with the akonadi server off just so you can see how much memory and cpu is freed.

You have more issues then this. Probably all the repositories and unneeded add-ons created a nasty recipe of bad or malicious software.

I'd backup what you need and rebuild if it really is that bad.

Anyway good luck.
 
I changed a video line in my grub. Logging out and rebooting worked fine.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I've cleaned up some stuff that was laying around. I stopped akonadi server.

Code:
sed -i 's/StartServer.*/StartServer=false/' ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc

Things are still rebooting as they should. I do log off first. It may be superstition but when I log in the there is that little box under the password box, says something about KDE. If I click that box it will go from normal to bold, I pick bold and log into my account. The same thing when I reboot.

Superstition? Maybe but I can reboot and no video problems.

There are still cache files and other files I feel I could delete to get more hard drive space but for now I'll just let it ride. Maybe??????
 

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