On 07/23/2015 04:34 PM, Paul Groves wrote:
My home partition is getting very large all of a sudden but my files on my home folder do not equal the size of the used space. I am the only user on this computer.
Is there a tool that can scan the home partition and give me a breakdown of what is using the space?
There could be other reasons but I'd like to make a generic observation about management of file space. One of the long standing reasons for having a separate /tmp partition was that runaway programs, including, I recall hearing, a compiler that was given a syndromic source code, can keep gobbling space. Think of while true do mkdir xyzzy cd xyzzy done but on a more sophisticated scale. There no reason that the space eater couldn't run in /var/tmp or /home/$USER/tmp or /home/$USER Now if you had only a single file system as some early versions of UNIX and even of commercialized UNIX (let not mention early Linux) had where there was only one file system, that eat ALL space and can even make logging in to find out what's going on impossible. Not only do I consider this a good reason for having a separate /tmp, it makes me very nervous about the BtrFS attitude of the One File System To Rule Them All that is More Efficient If It Uses Subvolumes Instead Of Partitions. I *like* hard boundaries. By the standards of many here my view of partitioning, as facilitated by LVM, may seem ridiculous, but it also eases backups (many partitions are under 5G so can slide onto a DVD nicely), lets me try out optimizations and even lets me see how other file systems compare. Well OK, some of that (e.g. RootFS on BtrFS vs ReiserFS vs XFS vs ext4) has more to do with LVM. Having ~Mail ~Downloads, ~Documents, ~Photographs and ~Music on separate FS not only isolates them for backup, it also isolates them if things go wild elsewhere so I can keep on working. My dot file in $HOME add up to nearly 3G. WOW! Are there potential runaways there? Possibly. Would it be nice to be able to back them up separately as well? Arguably. The takeaway here is that partitioning (and being able to unmount and 'protect') even the subdirectories of $HOME can be useful in a number of ways including putting limits on how space can be consumed. Hard partitions are useful. If, like the OP, I find my /home partition filling, i know for use it is not anything in ~Documents, ~Downloads ... and so forth. I also know that I can download into ~Downloads without it affecting work I'm doing in ~Documents ... and so forth. It may seem excessive to some but that's often the way with "safety measures". I *know* that there are whole class of events that I don't have to worry about. But still, over 2G of dot files! Check yours. Some of the huge collections are going to be under .cache but my .thumbnails are almost as large. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org