James Wilkinson wrote:
Gustavo Seabra wrote:How do I know that? is it just trying to find any mention of /tmp there? That's what I get:
I'm running out of space in the / (root) partition. To free some space, I want to clean the temporary files in /tmp, but I heard a while ago that it might break something if done while running a graphical desktop. How can I clean it then?
Log out, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to a text screen, log in as root,
check that the output of mount looks sane.
/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /home type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
Does that look sane?
This is important! Some scripts and programs will mount other stuff under /tmp (e.g. /tmp/windows). If you're not careful, you can delete stuff you don't mean to delete.
Then remove stuff from under /tmp. Try
shopt -s dotglob rm -ri /tmp/* shopt -u dotglob
Or (possibly safer) find /tmp -xdev -ok rm {} \;
When you're happy with what's happening, replace rm -ri with rm -rf (but *do* be careful), or -ok with -exec.
Press Alt+F7 to get back to the graphics mode.
Thanks a lot. I'll do that.
Also, yes, /var is there. and it is huge! How do I know what can be deleted from there?
Also, I believe someone suggested to clean this area every time the computer boots. How can I set it up for that?
Well, my preferred option is to have plenty of swap space and put this line in /etc/fstab: none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0 Then files held in /tmp will be held in memory or in the swap file (as the Linux virtual memory manager sees fit). In either case, when you reboot the computer, the contents will be lost.
Does anyone has any suggestions of what else I could clean up to free some extra space? (I'm using an old computer with just 5G for the root partition.)
Old kernels. Old Fedora packaged kernels. Keep a Known Good kernel, your current one, and *maybe* one you've just installed until you're happy with it. Then get rid of the old current one.
Check root's home directory.
What other partitions do you have? If /var isn't separate, there are a lot of things that take up masses of space in /var.
Hope this helps,
James.
Thanks again,
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Gustavo Seabra - Graduate Student
Chemistry Department
Kansas State University
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If at first you don't succeed...
...skydiving is not for you.