> On 09/09/2012 08:00 AM, Dirk Brandherm wrote:
> > Filesystem	1k-blocks	Used		Available	Use%
> > 		51606140	51604044		0	100%
>
> Wow! That's pretty full and looks like your problem has been found.
>
> The disk free (df) command told you that, and the disk used (du) command
> can tell you where all that space is being used. An easy way to get a
> full summary is:
>
> du -shx /*
>
> This may take some time to complete execution since it needs to run
> through the whole device. My guess is that your recent software
> installation was a lot larger than you expected and /usr or /var is
> probably huge now.
>
> /var could be huge because of other software as well, though, since
> variable state data is saved there -- things like database storage
> files, logs and the like that tend to grow with time.
>
> Since you are using a logical volume you can add another physical drive
> and extend the volume to include [part of] it. Or even better, you can
> move /var to its own partition if its the culprit (my usual approach).

Thanks for the great advice. It did indeed help me to find the culprit. In the 
end it wasn't in /usr or /var, but the "du" command did turn up a 44G file 
in /tmp, by the somewhat cryptic name of "tmpeC4B3G". 

Although I am fairly confident that it is probably a rubbish file, created by 
a runaway installation process caught in some stange loop, I was a bit 
reluctant to just delete it, and instead moved it over to my /home directory, 
i.e. as I now know to a different partition (@ Chris: as Steven had suggested 
this would be why deleting files from my home directory before had not solved 
the problem, but thanks a lot for your advice as well. In the end I didn't 
have to narrow down the search, as the number of files in /tmp wasn't that 
huge after all).

Moving the 44G file took ages, but did the trick. Following a restart, the 
system booted back into the GUI. It does, however, now show a warning 
message: "Failed to initialize packaging backend. This may occur if other 
packaging tools are being used simultaneously", and under "More details" it 
says: "There are unfinished transactions remaining. Please run 
yum-complete-transactions as root".

I am slightly reluctant to do this, though, as I fear it might bring the 
system to its knees again. Any suggestions?

Dirk