[SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

Vladz · Yesterday 13:16:54

Hello . Im running devuan 6 MATE . I have two hard disk , and i have seperate / and /home partiotions on them . The issue is , when i leave the pc running for several hours (i have sleep mode dissabled) , the space on my /home partition gets filled with "nothing" . Disk usage analyzer and the file explorer dont show what files have taken up the space , while the pc was idling . This happened several times , while i was away so idk what could be causing it . Each time Firefox , Deluge and VLC were open so idk if one of those programs idlling causes the issue . The first time i was able to reclaim the space by running fsck from a live usb . I didnt save the outputs of fsck so idk what it fixed . But now running fsck doesnt fix it and ive been moving files to / or /opt each time lol . What is causing this and how can i fix it ? Tell me what command outputs i should paste here for more info . Thnx .

tux_99 · Yesterday 13:45:45

Is it really a hard disk or rather a SSD? If it's a SSD it could be that the SSD is becoming defective (worn out). I would do a check with smartctl.

Last edited by tux_99 (Yesterday 13:46:11)

trinidad · Yesterday 14:58:19

Couple things come to mind. Are you using a swapfile instead of a swap partition? Is one OS running and controlling both disks? Are you cloning home?

TC

RedGreen925 · Yesterday 15:26:03

Open a terminal and use one of the commands in the page below to find the files. Space on a partition does not get taken up by nothing. Your "solving" it once by using live usb suggests the cache files that accumulate and get deleted on a restart may be part of the problem. Those are in hidden directories and if those programs you use to search for them do not check for those they will appear to be hidden. Try the qdirstat program it definitely shows the hidden files/directories on a partition in a graphical program.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/question … disk-space

Vladz · Yesterday 16:04:24

Thnx everyone for the ideas . i ran du -ah . | awk '$1 ~ /^[0-9.]+[MGTP]/ && ($1 ~ /G/ || ($1 ~ /M/ && $1+0 > 20))' to see what large files where on the partition and found this 78G ./vladz/.xsession-errors.old . LOL . When i opened it , it was full of: (mate-power-manager:2637): PowerManager-WARNING **: 17:47:08.819: failed to turn on DPMS: DPMS is not enabled . I guess we found the issue , but this is an issue in of itself right ? I deleted the xsession error log , wich freed up the space , but what could be causing MATE power manager to spam errors ? The pc this is running on is an old asf Dell optiplex 745 .

Vladz · Yesterday 16:07:34

@tux_99 Its a real hardisk .

Vladz · Yesterday 16:10:17

@trinidad its a swap partition and i only have devuan installed . Im not cloning /home

kapqa · Yesterday 16:18:35

you could check with hardinfo2?

https://hardinfo2.org/download

https://ibb.co/mr8vQ63n

RedGreen925 · Today 01:10:24

failed to turn on DPMS: DPMS is not enabled . I guess we found the issue , but this is an issue in of itself right ? I deleted the xsession error log , wich freed up the space , but what could be causing MATE power manager to spam errors ?

Certainly have found it two choices find out why the DPMS is not getting enabled to stop it spamming the log. I despise shoddy programming like that by the clueless fool that did it. Second option is this a bash/sh script you put in executable location to allow cron to run it every two hour say to delete the old file and create new. First fin the permissions of the file.

zeus@9600k:~$ ls  -lh .xsession-errors 
-rw------- 1 zeus zeus 305M Mar 19 21:47 .xsession-errors

On my machine it is read write only so that is how you want it to be when recreating it. So something like this for the file.

#!/bin/bash

# A script to remove the spam filed .xsession-errors that has been filling my /home partition

rm /home/username/.xsession-errors
touch /home/username/.xsession-errors
chmod 0600 /home/username/.xsession-errors

Now that does it for the file save it to somewhere that is in your and set the executable bit for me I would use my /home/username/bin directory for things like this.

nano /home/username/bin/xsession_errors_remove.sh
chmod +x /home/username/bin/xsession_errors_remove.sh

Now set it up to run from the crontab by using crontab -e to add a line in there for the normal user. My listing showing a script I run ever two hours to backup my home directory.

zeus@9600k:~$ crontab -l
# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
# 
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
snip ...
# 
# m h  dom mon dow   command

## Run my rsync snapshot script every two hours.
0 */2 * * * /home/zeus/bin/snapshot_home.sh  > /dev/null 2>&1

Change the path and file name to yours and you should have no more problems with that piece of junk messing you about.

greenjeans · Today 15:11:53

You can just delete the .xsession-errors file after you login, it will spawn a new one on re-boot, but not during a session. This is how golinux does it.

FYI mate has become somewhat infamous to those of us who tinker with it, for spamming xsession-errors, almost anything can cause it, sometimes it just doesn't like a theme or a particular app. A few months back a version of caja was so bad that if you just hovered over the xsession-errors file it would start rapidly filling up with even more garbage at the rate of a mb every couple seconds. I filed on that bug and to the debian-mate team's credit they fixed it in 24 hours, but it was bad.

steve_v · Today 17:17:24

greenjeans wrote:

This is how golinux does it.

Only after people with more clues provided the solutions. Zero credit due golinux on that one.

TLDR: If you don't care about .xsession-errors, bind-mount it to /dev/null. If you want to keep it (but still don't like huge files), set up logrotate with compression - even gzip will achieve near-magical compression ratios on a log file containing mostly repetitive messages.
If you want the underlying bug fixed, report it to the upstream for whatever GUI junk is flooding stderr.

greenjeans · Today 17:37:20

Turning into a tempest in a teacup here. OP have you checked your xset settings? xset q will tell you if DPMS is disabled. xset +dpms to enable it.

For all it's PITA times, .xsession-errors is still a good way to learn what's mis-behaving in your system, that's why I don't disable it, instead I fix the things it complains about.

golinux · Today 17:51:31

Note that if one rarely reboots, there is no need for fancy, smanchy solutions to .xsession-errors removal.

greenjeans · Today 18:16:41

^^ That's basically like putting a piece of tape over the check engine light in your car so you don't have to see that it needs maintenance.

golinux · Today 19:05:09

@greenjeans . . . That would depend on what you are doing with your machine day to day. I have only had to deal with .xsession-errors when I was messing around and breaking things and those days have faded into the past. Behaving for the machine is not a life. I have better things to do with my remaining years. Apologies if that offends you.

greenjeans · Today 20:50:58

Apologies if that offends you.

What a strange comment, why in the world would that offend me, or anyone for that matter? Did I offend you in some way with my comment? It wasn't targeted at you at all, it simply comes from a lifetime as an electrical and mechanical technician, and has to do with the importance of maintenance and not ignoring warning signs. Maintenance is always easier than repairs.

golinux · Today 21:48:55

Speaking of a strange comment that is totally irrelevant to my usecase:

greenjeans wrote:

^^ That's basically like putting a piece of tape over the check engine light in your car so you don't have to see that it needs maintenance.

My machine just works because I don't mess with it except for updates/upgrades and I only visit a very narrow selection of destinations. No experimentation. Just making sure that all of Devuan's moving parts are in order and tended to.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 Yesterday 13:16:54

[SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#2 Yesterday 13:45:45

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#3 Yesterday 14:58:19

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#4 Yesterday 15:26:03

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#5 Yesterday 16:04:24

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#6 Yesterday 16:07:34

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#7 Yesterday 16:10:17

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#8 Yesterday 16:18:35

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#9 Today 01:10:24

Re: [SOLVED] Hardisk space full , but no files .

#10 Today 15:11:53

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#11 Today 17:17:24

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#12 Today 17:37:20

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#13 Today 17:51:31

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#14 Today 18:16:41

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#15 Today 19:05:09

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#16 Today 20:50:58

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#17 Today 21:48:55

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