Home partition very large (SOLVED)

[Fornhamfred]

I am running MX 18 fully updated and when trying to run a snapshot found that the size of my home partition is 10.69gb and root is 9.86gb. I do not keep any data on home and as a comparison PcLinux partition sizes are Root 9.16gb and home 2.16gb on basically the same setup. I have checked all the home directories and cannot find any problem. Any help would be appreciated.

[dolphin_oracle]

I am running MX 18 fully updated and when trying to run a snapshot found that the size of my home partition is 10.69gb and root is 9.86gb. I do not keep any data on home and as a comparison PcLinux partition sizes are Root 9.16gb and home 2.16gb on basically the same setup. I have checked all the home directories and cannot find any problem. Any help would be appreciated.

there are lots of things that could be in your home folder. Some can be very large.

examples: steam game library defaults to your home folder, wine installs default to home folder. also, if you've run snapshots in the past, they are stored in /home/snapshot by default. look for hidden folders.

[Fornhamfred]

I am running MX 18 fully updated and when trying to run a snapshot found that the size of my home partition is 10.69gb and root is 9.86gb. I do not keep any data on home and as a comparison PcLinux partition sizes are Root 9.16gb and home 2.16gb on basically the same setup. I have checked all the home directories and cannot find any problem. Any help would be appreciated.

there are lots of things that could be in your home folder. Some can be very large.

examples: steam game library defaults to your home folder, wine installs default to home folder. also, if you've run snapshots in the past, they are stored in /home/snapshot by default.

Since posting I checked the size of my home file in thunar which shows the size to be 4gb. Snapshots are stored on the root partition on this system.

[m_pav]

My home partition is 1.48TB, so I don't see what the fuss is about because to my way of thinking, /home is what you make it. If you're dual-booting and have only provisioned 20GB for your entire Linux instalation and you choose to use different partitions, then to my way of thinking, it would have been better to have at the very least provisioned 30GB as a bare minimum. I have a 2TB drive and I have over-provisioned for Windows 10 at 350GB, I normally permit only 80, but I was teaching a class and demonstrating the Windows Hypervisor at the time I partitioned.

As a best practise, a MX Linux / partition should have at least 10GB of space to provide room for apt cache, log files and dynamic files to exist without running out of space. I give mine a minimum of 20 and a max of 25 because /tmp and /var can grow quite big when left unmanaged with some of the things I do.

May I suggest you take on board my minimum recommendations because you are making snapshots. You need to keep in mind that making a snapshot requires "room to process" as well as room for the resultant snapshot and with the measly partition sizes you have, it was inevitable you'd run out of space.

[Fornhamfred]

My home partition is 1.48TB, so I don't see what the fuss is about because to my way of thinking, /home is what you make it. If you're dual-booting and have only provisioned 20GB for your entire Linux instalation and you choose to use different partitions, then to my way of thinking, it would have been better to have at the very least provisioned 30GB as a bare minimum. I have a 2TB drive and I have over-provisioned for Windows 10 at 350GB, I normally permit only 80, but I was teaching a class and demonstrating the Windows Hypervisor at the time I partitioned.

As a best practise, a MX Linux / partition should have at least 10GB of space to provide room for apt cache, log files and dynamic files to exist without running out of space. I give mine a minimum of 20 and a max of 25 because /tmp and /var can grow quite big when left unmanaged with some of the things I do.

May I suggest you take on board my minimum recommendations because you are making snapshots. You need to keep in mind that making a snapshot requires "room to process" as well as room for the resultant snapshot and with the measly partition sizes you have, it was inevitable you'd run out of space.

Thanks for all the info.
The reason for posting is not about the size of the partitions, my home partition is 57gb but the fact that the used space seems to have increased in the last couple of months. This has an effect on the snapshots which are now over 10gb compared to two months ago when the size was 7gb. Also I am unable to find what is using the space and hoped that someone could suggest a method of finding what is causing the increase.

[anticapitalista]

How about this:

Install ncdu and then type ncdu in a terminal

[Huckleberry Finn]

Bleachbit ? And disk usage analyzer..?

[jmyersWVa]

been here done this. May not be your issue. check to see what's in download folder, or multiple snapshots in snapshots.

jerry

[Fornhamfred]

Bleachbit ? And disk usage analyzer..?

Thank you all for replies. I installed xdiskusage and that showed the culprits. In .config variety was using 3.33gb and also I did not realise that although the default snapshot file is owned by root it is actually stored on home, silly mistake. I have moved variety to my storage disk and deleted the snapshots. My home partition is now using 1.66gb.

[Huckleberry Finn]

My home partition is now using 1.66gb.

That sounds good. When it's not that inflated, you can easily & quickly copy / backup / archive to somewhere else whenever you remember and be in peace of mind..