I installed OpenSuse 11 on 17.5 Gig partion-based. I just accepted the default setting during the installation. Then one fine day I’m hit with this error:
“You are running low on disk space on your home partition (Currently 2%, 181 MB free). Would you like to run a file manager to free some disk space and fix the problem?”
Now I checked the home partition and it gave me this reading:
“Free Disk Space: 4.7 GB out of 9.4 GB (50% used)”
Question: why the heck I get the “low disk space” warning when I’ve only used 50% of the partition.? How the heck OpenSuse arrived at 2% disk space??? Can somebody tell me what to do please? Thanks
What program are you using to report free disk space?
Maybe you can check this command in console to see if the information is consistent with the data you have.
I ran the command you gave and got this result:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 9851308 4395160 4955728 48% /home
linux-f5u1:/home #
Then the problem might be related to your Desktop Environment. Are you using KDE or GNOME? Also, the message just popup when you login or it’s displayed within some specific application?
It might shed some light to this whole mess if I tell you that I always use the “root” account to login. Now when the “low disk space” warning happens and I run the “File Manager” button, I was led to the /root folder. Then I looked into its properties and gave me this result:
linux-f5u1:~ # df /root
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 7305416 7121112 0 100% /
Could that be causing the “low disk space” warning? I’ve got 0 disk space on my root folder. But why it states “home” in the warning?
The reason that I’m always logging in as “root” is that there’s an error whenever I run my Netbeans project w/ Glassfish if I’m not logged in as “root”. The error is about the failure to right into one of the files inside GlassFish folder. So it begs this question: how do I make a non-root user to have the privilege that of a “root” user? Thanks.
By the way, I’m using KDE 3.5 and it the warning pops up every now and then.
And then after you are convinced that you should change your login behaviour seriously, try to move as much as possible from your /root/ dirictory to the /home/<the-user-you-should-be>/ directory. I seems that all your crap has landed in your / partition and filled it up. Even to the amount where you are not even left with the normal amount of reserve space, because you did it al as root.
When you are not convinced, then please forget about my post.
Another reason why running Linux as root is very bad practice!
Probably don’t need to give it root permissions just change ownership:
In a console type su then root pass then chown -R yourusername /pathtoGlassFish
If you need to run somthing with root permissions use kdesu:
press ctrl+f2 Then in the window enter kdesu appname
You can do the same from a console using sudo appname
Hi. guys, thanks for the help. First, let me just state that this is my first crack at Linux OS. And I must say this is a baptism of fire as I don’t know that running Linux as root can wreak havoc. But all of that is too late now coz I’ve got myself is a real deep sh*t.
I followed the advice of hcvv to move the /root files to /home/<myname>. But when I tried to login as <myname>, I greeted with this error:
“Call to lnusertemp failed (temporary directory full?). Check your installation.”
As your yourself say you are a newbe to Linux let me first come back to the move you did.
How did you ‘move’ things? by using the **mv **command or different?
After moving to the /home/<user>/ did you make that user (and the group it belongs to) owner of the files by e.g. (as root, but I now take it for granted that you do only use methods given in the link I gave you and that you do not log in anymore, infact I should use the “login from the real console” method here because your as fumbling around with data of <user> so better not login in the GUI with <user> until finished):
cd /home /<user>
chown -R <user>:<group> * .*
where is most possibly users, but please check.
In fact you should not move everything because you may overwrite things of that are perfectly OK. That is why I said “as much as possible”. So an intelligent assessment of what is fact user data in /root, and what is in /home/ that is OK should be done. This may sound not that easy, but you made a mess out of it, so it will be not easy.
After this is done check how much space there is with:
it’s ok; there was no problem in the moving of files. The problem lies in the /local folder. It has become 0 disk space due to the applications that I installed as a root user. What i did was uninstall all the apps there and now I can log in as a different user. Whew!
But now I have a new issue: why is it that the codecs that I installed as root is not recognized when logged in as a different user? And i take it that all that time-consuming system update that I did as root won’t be carried over to the new user? Maybe there’s a way not to do this update all over again, right? Thanks again guys.
it should not be like that.all installs and updates are done as root only.
yast2 zypper does not ask for root passwd before starting?
except for browser plugins and such, other main package installations should be available for all users too
that is what i have seen in gentoo.
in my suse-11.0 new install i have done all updates as root they seem to work.
You seem to be utterly confused. I will try to give a few statements to help you to to get some insight.
Having no space left is not something that happens to a directory (like /tmp or /usr/local) it happens to a file system (which is in fact a disk partition). So when you have your system installed on two filesystems, namely / and /home (other configurations are possible) and / is full, everything in / is full except what belongs to /home.
When you are loged in as a normal user in KDE or Gnome and you start YaST it will ask for the root password (contrary to what you say).
When you instal software packages using YaST > Software > Sofware Management, after installation the features of that software are available to the normal users (there are of course exceptions for typical systems management software).
When you have installed openSUSE and you want your multimedia up and running there is a ‘one click install’ or a simple ‘install using YaST’ method. Look at the stickies in the Multimedia subforum. And after install the codecs are available to the normal user.
I back geoffro in advising a reinstall because from these distance in time and space we can not have a thorough enough look into the mess you created. And even if we were on the spot, I doubt if we could sort this out.
Try to save as much of your personal data as possible. This can be done to your /home. At the reinstall let the installer do nothing with your /home, check and recheck that in the partition part of the install (no formatting). Better copy the data to an USB stick or whatever. When a login on the system is not even possible at the console at the moment, try a Fail Save boot, or one in runlevel S, or use the install DVD and choose System Repair from the first menu. When you need help in the last case (or in one of the others) post for help.
