Root partition nearly full

[sonofsparda04]

I use 32 GB out of 500 for root, and recently i get this message saying that root partition is nearly full, i don’t have any unallocated space, is there a solution?

[growler]

/var/log file size?

[Aragorn]

Welcome to the forum!

@sonofsparda04

I use 32 GB out of 500 for root, and recently i get this message saying that root partition is nearly full, i don’t have any unallocated space

I presume you’re using btrfs, and yes, that can happen. This is due to the way btrfs allocates free space. It does this in chunks of 1 GiB.

The solution is to “btrfs balance” your root filesystem. This will relocate the data and spread it out across the available chunks.

See…

man btrfs-balance

Note: Even though the man page uses a hyphen, the command itself does not.

I would suggest trying first with…

sudo btrfs balance start --full-balance /

You can then check the output of…

btrfs filesystem usage -h /

Pay very good attention to the section labeled “Unallocated” in the output. This should more or less match the section labeled “Free”.

If the full balance does not yield a satisfactory result, you can give it another run with different parameters to fine-tune the balancing. For details, see the man page.

[andreas85]

You find good Information about Btrfs in the wiki

Btrfs

and in (disk full)

Btrfs

[HowTo] make btrfs faster

You can easily test whether you are affected: mount -t btrfs|grep -E '^[^#]'|grep -Ev 'noatime'|grep -E --color=always ',|btrfs|$'

what it does:

mount -t btrfs | search for btrfs mounts grep -E '^[^#]' | ignore commented lines grep -Ev 'noatime' | search lines without noatime grep -E --color=always ',|btrfs|$' colorize the output

or mount -t btrfs|grep -E '^[^#]'|grep -Ev 'noatime.*compress=zstd'|grep -E --color=always ',|btrfs|$' You are definitely not affected if…

[fbt89]

Also is /home under root? If so move it to another partition. [root tip] [How To] Move my home (content) to another partition

[Molski]

@fbt89

Also is /home under root?

If you have btrfs, which you haven’t even said yet? Even show us the output of lsblk -f ?

It is probably on it’s own volume, not partition. (Which shares free space.) I actually forget what the default is.

Did load and configure Timeshift? This will install a hook to automatically snapshot before every pacman upgrade, and will only grow unless you put in a retention policy, or manually clean up older ones.

@fbt89

If so move it to another partition. [root tip] [How To] Move my home (content) to another partition

If using btrfs, there is an easier way to move your home. Which is a lot different than those steps. But is it even necessary? No one knows!

[Nachlese]

@Molski

@fbt89

Also is /home under root?

If you have btrfs, which you haven’t even said yet? …

He offered his opinion - but is not the Op

[Molski]

Not sure how I missed that.