Disk full after system crash

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Papasot
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Disk full after system crash

Post by Papasot »

It has been years since the last time I had any problem with Salix, but here comes a weird one.

The system was on for about 24 hours, with Firefox downloading a big file. I was not nearby for some time, and when I came back the system was off, presumably by overheating (this happens sometimes, and it's the only kind of crash I've ever experienced with Salix, so I am confident this was the case). I restarted the system, but I soon realized I couldn't do much because, somehow, the / partition was literally full (df reported 100% partition space usage). Normally that partition is not even half-full, so I thought ok, somehow a huge file was created during the crash; never happened before, but what else can I conclude.
And here comes the weird part: a quick look with du -shx /* revealed that /home directory is taking up almost all partition capacity. Specifically, the home directory of my main user (and the one who was logged in when the system crashed) is huge, taking up all disk space available. However, there is no such a huge file in ~/, and not a huge-sized directory either (at least none visible by du -shx ~/*). In fact, home directory seems pretty normal, in terms of size and otherwise. The system acts as if it thinks disk is literally full, while this doesn't seem to be the case.
I booted from a USB stick running Slackel, and from there I checked the Salix xfs partition for errors or bad sectors. It took a while but it reported zero errors, zero bad sectors.
I am pretty sure there is something I don't know here, and that something will solve the problem. I deleted a few big files so that the system is at least usable in the meantime.
A pleasant detail in this forum: several people pick a picture of their pet as their avatar. Who am I to do otherwise? ;-)
galmei
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Joined: 1. Jun 2018, 21:54

Re: Disk full after system crash

Post by galmei »

Hello,

The downloaded file does not have to be in the file system as a single large file during the download. I have often seen that the download by Firefox, "youtube-dl" and "Video DownloadHelper" consists of many small and larger files, which are then converted into a single file at the end. To all appearances, the fragmentation is due to the download source. Thus, it would be safer to also look for locations in the file system that hold suspiciously many small files. For the Firefox browser version 78.11.0esr especially the directories

~/downloads
~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/
~/.mozilla/firefox/
/tmp

are possible.

Since Salix 14.0 the growth of the caches leads to malfunctions, so I delete all caches from rc.local_shutdown when shutting down the operating system. For Firefox, these are the contents of the directories:

~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/bjjhidtn.default-esr-1/cache2/entries
~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/bjjhidtn.default-esr-1/safebrowsing
~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/bjjhidtn.default-esr-1/startupCache
~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/bjjhidtn.default-esr-1/thumbnails

You write of the / partition and elsewhere of the home directory, which makes me suspect that root and home share a single partition. This could be significant, because if /tmp is heavily used and the file system fills up, then of course /home also loses its storage capacity.

However, all this does not explain why the entire hard disk space or partition space has been used up. Perhaps a previously undetected defect in the file system has occurred. There are several tools for the XFS file system. Have you used the tools in question?


Among other things, removing dust from the computer helps against overheating. If your avatar shows your dog on your carpet, then you have two additional sources as overheating causes.
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Papasot
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Re: Disk full after system crash

Post by Papasot »

galmei wrote: 17. Jun 2021, 13:04 The downloaded file does not have to be in the file system as a single large file during the download. I have often seen that the download by Firefox, "youtube-dl" and "Video DownloadHelper" consists of many small and larger files, which are then converted into a single file at the end. To all appearances, the fragmentation is due to the download source.
Downloaded file was just a *.part file less than 3Gb. There is no point to check the other folders you mentioned (although I did that again). I already stated that the size of each of them is way smaller than my hard disk capacity (for example /tmp is barely 2Gb, ~/.cache is less than that). My /home directory is the huge one, while it was not before the crash and there is no huge file or directory in it.
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ibka
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Re: Disk full after system crash

Post by ibka »

Hi

I have had almost the same problem once, could not find what took up space.
df reported the disk as full, other tools like du could not report where the problem was.
I did also run a disk check and it reported no errors.

If i remember correct i cleared all cache file/directories in my user directory, and reboot the machine.

I also had another problem with space on a different computer where i had a network share mounted and the computer crashed,
after that there was used more space than it should, the reason was that the ~/.gvfs directory contained files that should not be there because i had no share mounted after reboot, so somehow files where left behind at the crash of the machine.
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Papasot
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Re: Disk full after system crash

Post by Papasot »

Problem solved... although I am not sure how. I cleared up every cache, re-run xfs_repair (just in case), and basically everything else I could think it might help. And it did. Home directory is not huge anymore. Thank you all for your advice. :)
A pleasant detail in this forum: several people pick a picture of their pet as their avatar. Who am I to do otherwise? ;-)
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