HDD Inexplicably Full

[James Tappin]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:13:34 +0200
Rafiq Hajat <ipi.malawi at gmail.com> wrote:

RH> I know that I had at least 30gb free but this has appeared out of
RH> the blue to my complete perplexity.
RH> I'm using Karmic 9.10 on a Compaq 6829s laptop and, aside from a few
RH> ongoing hassles with grub2, have generally been quite happy with it.
RH> I don't know what exactly info you would need to get to the bottom
RH> of this quandary and will humbly await your guided instructions to
RH> acquire the relevant data to assist diagnosis.
RH> I am anxiously standing by awaiting your helping hands.

The most obvious first step is to find out where the excess stuff is. 
df -h in the top level directory of the full partition will list the
amount of space used in each directory and that should show you where
the problem lies -- then an ls -l on the suspect directory(ies) should
show what's in them and how big it is (for home directories ls -la may
be needed if there are last hidden files).

-- 
+------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+
| James Tappin           | School of Physics & Astronomy |  O__    |
| sjt at star.sr.bham.ac.uk | University of Birmingham      | --  \/` |
| Ph: 0121-414-6462. Fax: 0121-414-3722                  |         |
+--------------------------------------------------------+---------+