On Monday 19 March 2018 06:23:15 Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 05:10:15AM -0700, William
Morder wrote:
Okay, so riddle me this: Why does space on my
root partition keep
disappearing?
When you say root partition, I assume you mean that /home is a separate
partition.
My /dev/sda is set up like so:
sda1 /
sda2 swap
sda3 /home
Check for anything unusual in the logs. What do they
say?
Checking logs will take a while, but will get to that. I will look
into .xsession-errors first. I sometimes log into konqueror as root, just for
troubleshooting, but I don't leave it open.
One you might not think of is .xsession-errors, which
is normally in
your home directory. If you are logged into a GUI as root, you could
have /root/.xsession-errors too. I once had one grow large enough to
fill my home partition in a matter of hours. I don't remember what was
causing it, sorry, but if you find the .xsession-errors file is huge,
you can always read it and see what it says.
(I'm assuming the systemd hasn't eliminated .xsession-errors, like
they've eliminated everything else pure and good in the world...)
Yes, systemd is a sure sign that Doomsday is approaching:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180219182020/https://www.infoworld.com/articl…
Check for file system corruption.
https://superuser.com/questions/401217/how-to-check-root-partition-with-fsc
k
Run smartctrl to check the disk. Suppose your root partition is on
/dev/sda, I would run something like:
# basic health check
smartctl -H -d ata /dev/sda
# short test
smartctl -t short -C -d ata /dev/sda
smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl isn't the easiest or most intuitive program in the world, make
sure you read some tutorials first. Try this one:
https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/SMART_tests_with_smartctl
If you're running solid state disks, there's probably no point: in
general, they either work, or die, with nothing in between.
If you've eliminated everything else -- emptied all caches, no file
system corruption or bad disks, no unusual entries in the logs etc --
then you may have to consider the possibility that you've been hacked,
despite all your security. If somebody is using your computer for
bitcoin mining, that might do it: the block chain exceeded 100GB a few
years ago.
http://www.coinfox.info/news/6700-bitcoin-blockchain-size-reaches-100-gb
Yes, that's 100 gigabytes. Or simply storing their warez on your
computer, like it's 1999 again :-)
I did have a problem where Firefox kept freezing my computer, or disconnecting
me; but once I changed to Icecat, it my computer has been purring like a
kitten.