Related to:

Hard Disk is full, Partition is full, hard drive full, run out of space.

Problem

• A hard disk or a partition is out of space available to store new data.

Possible Cause(s)

• Root Cause 1: An application or system task has filled the disk with data.

Possible Solution(s)

• Solution Root Cause 1:

The first thing it would be to find out what directory is using the more amount of data or look for large files that might be causing the issue.

The command 

df -h

It can provide you a view of the percent utilization of your different partitions within the system. Also provide information on the size of the partition and the amount used.

The Command

du -h <dir> 2>/dev/null | grep '[0-9\.]\+G'

It can provide you a view of the directory indicated and subfolders sorting out directories that is 1+ GBs and up. 

The Command

du -a | sort -n -r | head -n 5

It can provide you the top 5 biggest directories in the current working directory

The Command

find <dir> -type f -exec du -Sh {} + | sort -rh | head -n 5

It can provide you the biggest file sizes only in that directory

Most of the time the hard disk get filled by rotating logs or backups which go filling a directory until complete the disk space, therefore not necessarily the root cause might be the biggest files on the disk.

To delete the files(s) in Linux, you will need to use the command

rm /path/to/directory/*

to delete the contents of a specific directory

rm filename.xyz

to delete a file

rm *.xyz

to delete all files with specific extension

The command will ask you for confirmation if you want to delete the file (you can use the option -f to avoid the confirmation).

NOTE: You need to make sure you are not deleting files relevant for the operation of any of your applications or system (eg:  a database file might be big but it is required for the operation of your application).

Normally, old log files or old backups are safe to delete but with the consideration of your security policy for retention (eg - have backups for the last 7 days etc)

Please, Always check with your system administrator or software vendor if it is safe to delete those files.

Related Articles

• There are a great number of articles and references on the internet for system maintenance tasks and system administration.

If Further Questions

• Please contact with our Client Services team via the chat service box available in any of our websites or via email to support@itrsgroup.com