root partition full, what files / folders can I delete

[robert rottermann]

Colin thanks

On 17.02.22 22:12, Colin Law wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Feb 2022 at 21:03, robert rottermann <robert at redcor.ch> wrote:
>> Hi there
>>
>> I have a server running with an uptime of some 5 years..
>>
>> root at susanne /var/log # uptime
>>    21:49:54 up 1939 days, 21:50,  1 user,  load average: 1.84, 2.04, 1.83
>>
>> Its root partition has filled up to nearly 100%
>>
>> root at susanne /var/log # df / -h
>> Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>> /dev/md2         20G   18G  1.1G  95% /
>>
>> now my questions are:
>>
>> 1. what folders are in the root partition
> Everything that isn't in other partitions.  That may sound flippant
> but actually it isn't.  It is impossible to know what is in that
> partition without knowing whether, for example, you have a separate
> /home partition.
I do have a separate /home partition
>> 2. What folder/files can I delete without killing anything?
> Don't do this yet
>
>>       Like /tmp ...
>>
>> 3. how can I find out what folder in
> Start by doing
> sudo apt autoremove
> sudo apt clean
>
> which may well free up a good chunk.  Then install ncdu. Then run
> sudo ncdu /
> and it will tell you how much space is used where.  You can step down
> the tree to find where the large usage is.
>
> Colin
>
ncdu helped me to find:

root at susanne /home # ll /var/lib/fail2ban/ -h
total 8.6G
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Feb 17 22:28 ./
drwxr-xr-x 69 root root 4.0K Mar  6  2020 ../
-rw-------  1 root root 8.6G Feb 17 22:28 fail2ban.sqlite3


can I somehow restart/reinit  fail2ban so that this file is reset?

thanks again
Robert