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Accepted
Shihab Khan
Asked: 2018-11-02 23:42:56 +0800 CST

Ubuntu says no disk space in home directory but there is space

  • 772

Whenever I boot in Ubuntu it tells me 0 bytes worth of free space is remaining whereas Disk usage analyser tells me I have 22GB worth of space available.

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           790M  2.1M  788M   1% /run
/dev/sda6        46G   25G   19G  57% /
tmpfs           3.9G  4.2M  3.9G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop1      5.0M  5.0M     0 100% /snap/canonical-livepatch/50
/dev/loop0      3.8M  3.8M     0 100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/57
/dev/loop2       13M   13M     0 100% /snap/gnome-characters/124
/dev/loop3       88M   88M     0 100% /snap/core/5662
/dev/loop4       15M   15M     0 100% /snap/gnome-logs/40
/dev/loop5      3.8M  3.8M     0 100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/54
/dev/loop8      141M  141M     0 100% /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/74
/dev/loop14      88M   88M     0 100% /snap/core/5548
/dev/loop6      2.3M  2.3M     0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/238
/dev/loop16      43M   43M     0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/701
/dev/loop10     5.0M  5.0M     0 100% /snap/canonical-livepatch/42
/dev/loop21      13M   13M     0 100% /snap/gnome-characters/139
/dev/loop19      15M   15M     0 100% /snap/gnome-logs/45
/dev/loop11      13M   13M     0 100% /snap/gnome-characters/117
/dev/loop12     4.8M  4.8M     0 100% /snap/canonical-livepatch/49
/dev/loop13      88M   88M     0 100% /snap/core/5742
/dev/loop15     2.3M  2.3M     0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/222
/dev/loop7      141M  141M     0 100% /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/70
/dev/loop17     2.3M  2.3M     0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/260
/dev/loop9      3.8M  3.8M     0 100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/51
/dev/loop18      35M   35M     0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/319
/dev/loop20      15M   15M     0 100% /snap/gnome-logs/43
/dev/sda8        50G   48G     0 100% /home
tmpfs           790M   16K  790M   1% /run/user/122
tmpfs           790M   12K  790M   1% /run/user/1000

What's wrong?

dual-boot partitioning 18.04

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You seem to have two relevant partitions on your computer's disk. Partition 1, /dev/sda6, has 19 GB available but Partition 2, /dev/sda8, where your /home directory resides, is full. Try to move some big files/directories out of /home, perhaps to /var/tmp, or create a new top-level dir, perhaps /data and move the big files there.

    • 18

  2. Let me recommend a simple solution. Since I don't really know what you're putting into your /home folder, it would be nice to create a folder in the root (/) and transfer those files there.

    Solution steps:

    1. Create top level folder in the root (/):

      sudo mkdir /data

    2. Make it accessible by changing ownership and permission, permanently in this case:

      sudo setfacl -d -m u:$USER:rwx,g:$USER:rwx,o::r-x /data

      Or simply change ownership of that new location:

      sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /data

    3. Move your data files (not your configuration files!) from your /home/$USER directory into that location.

    4. Check the usage level for /home with df -h /home.

    • 3

  3. By default, when a new file system is created in a partition or logical volume using a Linux file system, a small amount it reserved for use by root only. Typically, 5% of the total storage. This is very important for the OS partition, so that routine maintenance can complete.

    But for non-OS partitions, like HOME, reserving 5% of the total storage is probably as waste. The good news is that we can take back that storage, at least for ext3/4 partitions using tune2fs.

    Looking at:

    /dev/sda8        50G   48G     0 100% /home
    we can estimate that 5% of 50G is 2.5G. If you need just a tiny bit more storage quickly to give you some time to go and clean up more, then this command will show the file system configuration: $ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda8 # that's a lower-case -L. Find the reserved block count. On one of my disks, it is:
    Reserved block count:     669030
    This command will make the reserved block percentage 0%:
    $ sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sda8

    Or you could change the userid which has access to the reserved space to be your userid instead of the default, root.

    Anyway, just another option, but you'll want to clean up the storage or move some storage around. I only allocate 25G for the OS on all my desktop systems. Servers need less. That should be more than enough for all the programs normally used on a desktop.

    • 1