trinity-users@lists.pearsoncomputing.net

Message: previous - next
Month: March 2018

Re: [trinity-users] my vanishing root partition

From: Steven D'Aprano <steve@...>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:23:15 +1100
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.

Check for anything unusual in the logs. What do they say?

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...)

Check for file system corruption.

https://superuser.com/questions/401217/how-to-check-root-partition-with-fsck

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 :-)



-- 
Steve