On 09/11/2012 01:05 PM, D Brandherm wrote:
>> 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

You should be able to find remaining transactions in /var/lib/yum/

I'd be curious what 'file' says about your weird temp file

-- 
Pat Riehecky
Scientific Linux Developer