'Root is full' problem

[Nils Kassube]

R Kimber wrote:
> I'm getting 'root is full' messages after installing a new USB drive,
> but I can't work out how to sort it out.
> 
> The background is:-
> 
> I had a failing USB drive (there are two).
> I unmounted both USB drives.
> I commented out both drives in /etc/fstab.
> I unplugged the failing drive.
> I rebooted.
> 
> I used gparted to format the new drive.
> 
> It turned out that the good USB drive was mounted after the reboot,
> though not of course the new drive, but not where it had been
> specified in fstab. (How does that happen? I thought fstab controlled
> drive mounting). And I get the 'root is full' message.
> 
> So, where do I go from here?

I don't think the "root is full" message is related to the mounted USB 
drive. Please check if there is really no space on / with the command

df -h /

To free some space, you could try the command

sudo apt-get clean

but of course that only helps if you have the system configured to keep 
downloaded packages. Other than that, you could have a look at 
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoverLostDiskSpace>.

> And how do I specify where USB drives are mounted (scripts are
> involved so I need to know where they are).  I thought I could mount
> drives wherever I wanted.

Usually drives are mounted automatically by the udisks-daemon at 
/media/$USER/name where "name" is e.g. the label of the partition. I'm 
not sure what is used if there is no label, but I suppose it is the UUID 
(sorry I don't have a removable partition without label to test it).

Of course you can mount drives wherever you want, but IIRC, Ubuntu and 
also Xubuntu is configured to automatically mount every partition 
available. Probably someone else can tell you where you can change this 
behaviour. I think you can prevent a particular partition from being 
mounted automatically with an entry in /etc/fstab with the mount option 
"noauto".


Nils