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I'm new to the linux file system and need help. I have four partitions on my disk:

  • /boot is 1GB (/dev/sdb1)
  • /swap is 2GB (/dev/sdb2)
  • / is 10GB (/dev/sdb3)
  • /home is 227GB (/dev/sdb4)

My root folder is almost full and I keep getting a warning message. I have two questions regarding this file system:

  1. Is the root partition supposed to keep filling up past 10GB?
  2. Is the way my disk partitioned correct?

I've seen suggestions of using the command apt-get autoremove --purge to clean up some space in the root folder. It removed 76MB and my root folder is still 90% full. I saw this post: What do I do when my root filesystem is full? but I didn't understand what the person who answered was trying to accomplish with the other commands. I ran them and had no idea what I was looking for or doing.

Note: I have windows installed on a separate hard drive. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I have the option of running ubuntu or windows when I start up my computer.

OS: Ubuntu 20.04

Update: Alright I'm not sure why I had a separate partition for my /home folder but that's what was recommended on some article's tutorial when I first installed ubuntu. That's also where I was recommended 10GB for the root ( / ) folder, which is nowhere near enough. I've since installed a fresh image of ubuntu and left the drive allocation on default. Now, everything is in the root ( / ) folder except for a Microsoft reserved partition and the EFI system partition (since I have windows installed on another disk and use dual boot). Thanks for the feedback

notAdev313
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1 Answers1

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This is usually because /var is not on its own partition. Most logs get written there and if / is too small then just normal system activity will fill up the root filesystem with logs.

However, you can find out where the space has been used by running something like:

du -sh /*

If /var, you can put it in its own partition, figure out which logs are balooning and fix the cause(s), or just get aggressive about rotating your logs frequently.

AgentSmith
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