low disk space on filesystem root even though I barely have any apps/files

[newnewnew]

Hi! I'm super new to Linux as I only use it for my code class. Recently, every time I boot my Ubuntu partition I receive this message: 'Low disk space on filesystem root', but emptying the trash seems to do nothing. I've tried to follow other threads but I'm not confident enough yet to doing it on my own so I'm here to ask for a little bit of help!
This is the outcome of 'df -h':
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 748M 2,1M 746M 1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p4 39G 37G 147M 100% /
tmpfs 3,7G 0 3,7G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5,0M 4,0K 5,0M 1% /run/lock
efivarfs 148K 132K 12K 92% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/nvme0n1p1 46G 35M 46G 1% /boot/efi
tmpfs 748M 120K 748M 1% /run/user/1000

Thanks in advance!

 

[Danbor]

My first thought was, check and see if Timeshift has been storing snapshots unattended and filled root.

 

[osprey]

Hi! I'm super new to Linux as I only use it for my code class. Recently, every time I boot my Ubuntu partition I receive this message: 'Low disk space on filesystem root', but emptying the trash seems to do nothing. I've tried to follow other threads but I'm not confident enough yet to doing it on my own so I'm here to ask for a little bit of help!
This is the outcome of 'df -h':
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 748M 2,1M 746M 1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p4 39G 37G 147M 100% /
tmpfs 3,7G 0 3,7G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5,0M 4,0K 5,0M 1% /run/lock
efivarfs 148K 132K 12K 92% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/nvme0n1p1 46G 35M 46G 1% /boot/efi
tmpfs 748M 120K 748M 1% /run/user/1000

Thanks in advance!

Well, there appears to have been a gross problem created at installation with 46G for the EFI partition which usually needs around 512MB! The root partition is at 100% usage, which is dysfunctional for linux where around 85% is probably as high as one ought to entertain going for functioning to continue normally.

One possible "repair" is to run a live disk with the program Gparted on it, and try and enlarge the root partition by relocating most of the disk allocated to the EFI partition, to the root partition.

This is not normally a process that would be easily accomplished by someone "super new to Linux", so it could be an adventure. There is a fairly thoroughgoing set of documentation on the Gparted website itself, and a live disk can be created from that site, though many live disks from various distros do include Gparted these days.

Otherwise, to resolve the issue, one can reinstall the distro and create partitions of a more efficient and effective size. That may be easier, if you are able to back up what you don't wish to lose. Back ups can be to a usb or an external disk etc. You may actually need to boot up a live disk to actually copy off files of interest to back up if the system won't work as intended.

 

[Condobloke]

/dev/nvme0n1p1 46G 35M 46G 1% /boot/efi.....that will do it everytime !

Follow @osprey's advice....Reinstall the distro.

512MB for efi partition....no more!!

pics below are mine...on a 250 gb drive

First one is the efi, file system partition 1

Second one is the rest of the drive

Thats it.

Go for it.

 

[bob466]

As shown above...the EFI Boot Partition is created by the Linux installer and must not be touched...otherwise you're going to have big problems.

The other Partition (Root) takes up the rest of the Drive...I have the same setup (my SSD is 500GB)...it makes sense these days to do this because updates are much larger now...

Here we have 4 updates totalling 1GB just today. If you have a small Root Partition it will fill up very fast and that's why you get...Low Disk Space.