/ partition filled. What went wrong?

[Rod J]

I had a similar problem to this some time back caused by my old TV card malfunctioning. The log files ballooned in size alarmingly with repetitive lines that indicated the fault was with the TV card. I knew there was something amiss at the time it was happening because the system became so unresponsive.

Simply reseating the TV card in its slot sorted the problem.

[dibl]

I recognize that error, although I haven't personally been the victim of it. It's a new kernel issue, apparently resolved with 3.8.4. If your google translator can translate German, there's more here.

[oshunluvr]

Toward the end, they seemed to have gone away. Could be an update fixed this. My opinion: delete the log files and check back in on them every day for awhile. If the above error doesn't return - you're probably OK.

[oshunluvr]

The device list from lspci should suffice. We're looking for devices at:

0000:00:04:1
0000:01:07:0

[oshunluvr]

Your log is almost entirely a kernel error regarding a wireless card. Please post your system hardware details.

ehci_hcd 0000:00:04.1: PCI-DMA: Out of IOMMU space for XXXXX bytes

[jlittle]

I would at least start reading them first.

Somewhat late, I would second this. I suggest less /var/log/kern.log, press G, and maybe page back a few pages and see what's there; it might be very repetitive. If you do want to send some log files somewhere, their repetitiveness can allow significant compression, I'd expect at least a 90% reduction.

Regards, John Little

[Snowhog]

@oshunluvr:

user@user-office-desktop:~$ ls -lhS /var/log
total 21G
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  9.9G Mar 24 07:38 kern.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  5.1G Mar 26 12:03 kern.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  4.8G Mar 25 07:38 syslog.1

can I just delete those log files? Will they regenerate?

Yes. The three above are the 'hogs', consuming 19.8G of space! All these logs can be deleted, and they will be recreated. Why they are as large as they are, I don't know. They are way bigger than they should be.

[oshunluvr]

Actually - it requires Google Drive but you can sign up for free.

[oshunluvr]

I would at least start reading them first. If you still need a bit of space to keep running, delete the older ones first keeping the two newest for review. Do you have a gmail account? Supposedly you can send a file up to 10GB. I'll take a look if you're unsure of what to look for but I'm not going to post my gmail address openly. Send me a PM if you want to try and I'll give you my gmail.

[Jastring]

the sad part is that they're too big for even a dropbox. Is it safe to assume that after I delete them, the problem should make them regen at a smaller size?

[oshunluvr]

Yes and yes but you'd be better off reading them first to figure out what processess are causing the problem. They are obviously too large to post here but maybe you have dropbox or some other way to share them?

[Jastring]

@oshunluvr:

user@user-office-desktop:~$ ls -lhS /var/log
total 21G
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  9.9G Mar 24 07:38 kern.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  5.1G Mar 26 12:03 kern.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  4.8G Mar 25 07:38 syslog.1
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  293M Mar 26 12:05 syslog
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  272M Mar 22 07:43 syslog.4.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  5.5M Mar 20 08:03 syslog.6.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  5.1M Mar 21 07:38 syslog.5.gz
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  5.0M Mar 23 07:57 syslog.3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 1.2M Mar 24 18:53 dpkg.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 334K Mar 26 12:03 udev
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root   utmp 286K Mar 19 16:39 lastlog
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm  280K Mar 24 07:39 syslog.2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 129K Mar 20 08:03 jockey.log.1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root   utmp 102K Mar 26 12:06 wtmp
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   74K Mar 26 10:27 dmesg.0
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   73K Mar 26 12:03 dmesg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  72K Mar 26 12:03 pm-powersave.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  59K Mar 26 12:04 Xorg.0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  59K Mar 26 10:37 Xorg.0.log.old
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  52K Mar 19 22:18 alternatives.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm   50K Mar 24 07:30 auth.log.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  47K Feb 13 20:17 bootstrap.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  32K Mar 19 16:39 faillog
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm   23K Mar 26 12:03 auth.log
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   17K Mar 26 10:21 dmesg.1.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   17K Mar 26 09:22 dmesg.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   17K Mar 25 19:47 dmesg.3.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   17K Mar 25 12:10 dmesg.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 6.9K Mar 26 12:03 kdm.log
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Mar 19 15:39 apt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Mar 19 15:47 ConsoleKit
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Mar 25 07:38 cups
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Oct 10 11:34 dist-upgrade
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Feb 13 20:16 fsck
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Jul 10  2012 hp
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Mar 19 15:45 installer
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Mar 19 15:47 news
drwxr-x--- 2 root   adm  4.0K Jun  8  2012 samba
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Nov 14 19:34 unattended-upgrades
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root 4.0K Mar 25 10:07 upstart
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm  3.0K Mar 26 12:03 apport.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 2.6K Mar 19 22:13 fontconfig.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 2.4K Mar 25 07:38 kdm.log.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 1.2K Mar 26 12:03 boot.log
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm  1001 Mar 24 19:52 apport.log.1
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   889 Mar 19 22:20 apport.log.5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  780 Mar 23 07:55 kdm.log.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   278 Mar 20 21:57 apport.log.4.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   276 Mar 22 14:39 apport.log.2.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm   271 Mar 21 17:26 apport.log.3.gz
-rw-r----- 1 root   adm    31 Feb 13 20:16 boot
-rw-rw---- 1 root   utmp    0 Feb 13 20:16 btmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root    0 Mar 20 08:03 jockey.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm     0 Mar 19 15:47 mail.err
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm     0 Mar 19 15:47 mail.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root    0 Mar 19 22:16 pycentral.log
-rw-r----- 1 syslog adm     0 Mar 19 15:47 ufw.log

can I just delete those log files? Will they regenerate?

[oshunluvr]

Obviously some logs files are out of control. Look at the output of

ls -lhS /var/log

and see what files are huge.

[Jastring]

on a hunch, I ran jlittle's command with a couple of tweaks:

user@user-office-desktop:~$ sudo du -hx --max=1 /var
3.2M    /var/backups
84K     /var/spool
899M    /var/lib
21G     /var/log
4.0K    /var/opt
4.0K    /var/local
4.0K    /var/mail
708K    /var/crash
275M    /var/tmp
161M    /var/cache
22G     /var

and

user@user-office-desktop:~$ sudo du -hx --max=1 /var/log
4.0K    /var/log/dist-upgrade
68K     /var/log/cups
16K     /var/log/ConsoleKit
260K    /var/log/apt
4.0K    /var/log/news
4.0K    /var/log/samba
432K    /var/log/upstart
4.0K    /var/log/unattended-upgrades
12K     /var/log/fsck
1.4M    /var/log/installer
4.0K    /var/log/hp
21G     /var/log

[Jastring]

@Snowhog:
I was successfully able to run that command last night, but lost my internet connection this morning for some reason. Now when I try to re-run it, my computer freezes up. Not sure what that's about.

@Jlittle:
Here's the output of the command:

user@user-office-desktop:~$ sudo du -hx --max=1 /
[sudo] password for user: 
8.0K    /.config
4.0K    /mnt
3.4M    /lib32
4.0K    /lib64
14M     /etc
1.0K    /boot
8.7M    /sbin
3.8G    /usr
374M    /lib
4.0K    /srv
0       /proc
0       /dev
8.9M    /bin
22G     /var
0       /sys
192M    /opt
0       /run
16K     /lost+found
4.0K    /selinux
56K     /media
4.0K    /cdrom
52K     /tmp
4.0K    /home
336K    /root
26G     /

What is sitting in /var? Why is that folder at 22G?