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/article/2608798/data-center/systemd--harbinger-of-the-linux-apocalypse.html > 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.