Request for explanation of error message

[Bret Busby]

On 29/07/2019, Paul Smith <paul at mad-scientist.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2019-07-29 at 02:51 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
>> Whatever is happeing, I now have
>>
>> "
>> bret at bret-MD34045-2521:~$ ls -l /var/log/lightdm/x*.*
>> -rw------- 1 root root 64086904832 Jul 29 02:49 /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log
>> "
>>
>> and no space left on the / partition.
>>
>> So, whatever is happening, the file, as it stands, has to be deleted,
>> as it has rendered the system unusable.
>
> I haven't been following this thread, but I mean, have you looked at
> the contents of that file to see what it says?
>
> You can view the last 20 lines, for example, by opening a terminal
> window and running:
>
>   tail -n20 /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log
>
> It could be that it's spewing errors or warnings to that file, which
> could lead you to a poorly-behaving program on your system or warn you
> about some hardware or configuration issue.
>
> I don't use lightdm (I use standard gdm) so I can't say for sure but
> it's possible simply deleting that file won't solve your disk space
> problem: if lightdm keeps the file open to write to it then removing it
> via "sudo rm -f /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log" won't actually free the disk
> space: on POSIX systems disk space is only cleaned up when there are no
> more references to the file.  If you try to delete it and you're still
> out of space you'll have to at least log out and log back in to restart
> the display manager, and/or possibly kill the process.
>
> In general those log files are for your information, for helping to
> track down issues.  The system itself doesn't need them for proper
> operation so if you need to delete them you should feel free to do so.
> It won't break anything.
>
>
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I had previously posted tail -30 of the log file, which showed nothing useful.

A PCI error is in the system, and, the log files within lightdm simply
attack the system, by growing, and, as one gets deleted, another
starts growing.

It is like a viral attack by the log files.

My system had frozen, after I deleted the file, and, I had to do a
dirty reboot - switching off the power on the computer, waiting a
minute, then booting up again.

After that, the file manager (caja) shows 59GB of free space in the / partition.

So, deleting the file that was 64GB, freed up only 59GB.

It is like that old proverb - no matter how big is the hard drive, it
will get eaten up - this time, by the operating system, that
apparently needs a terabyte or so, for the root partition.


-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

....................................................