Hello all.
I am using OpenSuse 11.2 (64 bits) with KDE 4.3.1. My hard disk partition contains 3 areas : / + /home + swap. Frequently the / area is filling with, I suppose, temporary files until it is full (15 Go) and that in a very short time, typically about 5 mn. Then, these files are cleaned by the system, when disk space is needed I suppose. The point is that during this time, the system goes slower and slower until the “cleaning”. That seems to occur only when Firefox (3.5.6) is running so I suppose that these files are temporary internet files.
Has someone an idea to solve this problem ? Thanks a lot for your answers.
If you think these are temporary Internet files, try cleaning the Firefox history by clicking on ‘Tools’ > ‘Clear Recent History…’ (or CRTL+SHIFT+Delete). Then choose to clear ‘Everything’ and see what happens.
You can have a look at /tmp directory where temporary files are kept.
Anyway, no program should fill up that space that quickly and if you are suspecting that firefox is doing that, there is something wrong with that.
Also, if you like, give this browser a try: chromium.
OK, thanks for your answer jonitfcfan, but I am looking for a solution in order not to this problem does happen again more than a way to clean these files when they are downloaded.
Use the df and du command line utilities to find where exactly the root partition fills up. Have a special look at /tmp and /var/log. Then you will be able to figure out what is writing the files and correct the issue.
How big are your partitions? Please post (as root or su)
fdisk -l
Have you set cron up to clear up tmp files?
If not go to Yast-/etc/sysconfig Editor-System-Cron, you can then determine how long you want temp files to remain before being deleted, and which directories to clear. That is probably the easiest/safest way to clear temp files.
Here it is :
Disque /dev/sde: 250.1 Go, 250059350016 octets
255 têtes, 63 secteurs/piste, 30401 cylindres
Unités = cylindres de 16065 * 512 = 8225280 octets
Identifiant de disque : 0xcab10bee
Périphérique Amorce Début Fin Blocs Id Système
/dev/sde3 * 1 1973 15848091 83 Linux
/dev/sde4 1974 30401 228347910 5 Etendue
/dev/sde5 1975 2497 4200997+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sde6 2498 30401 224138848+ 83 Linux
Actually, I think that the tmp files are correctly managed by my system since when the root partition is full, any “action” on the system which needs disk space leads to all these tmp files to be deleted. The point is that, when the problem occurs, about 10 Go of tmp files are written on the disk in a few minuts. I do not know if it is suitable to force the system to clean the temporary files every minut but perhaps I am wrong…
I recall seeing this behavior a few years ago in RedHat. One of the programs was writing endless log files, I think it was SAR that was at fault.
As someone else suggested, use du and df to locate the files. Stop the program from running and see if there’s an upgrade, or file a bug report.