Thanks Lisa. Deleting some of the /var/log/messages files did free up enough space that I was able to boot into kde. But questions remain: why did the system create about 3-gig of messages? And that only reduced the root partition from 12-gigs to 9-gigs when there is actually only 3.5-gigs of valid content in the root partition? > You can check your free inodes via: # df -i > or via: # tune2fs -l /dev/sdb1 | grep *Free df -i shows 770K Inodes available 162K used and 608K available, so that is not the problem. tune2fs does not work. > and delete all the files in; > /var/spool/mail/root > /var/log/messages > /var/log/mail* > /var/log/mess* /var/log/messages did have enormous files and /var/log/syslog also has more enormous files which seem to be identical in size to /var/log/messages. Why are these duplicated? > Look for core files locate core generates a huge list of files that contain 'core' as part of the file names, but none that I can identify as core dumps. How can I find only core dumps? > You can also use yum or apt-get to remove a package to quickly get some > diskspace free. I have been able to 'rm' some files (i.e. messages), but what packages could I safely remove? > Use locate (find-utils) to identify and remove core files, iso's and > Virtualbox images. But you can't find or locate without /tmp file space. > removing the root mail spool (be sure to create it again with > "touch /var/spool/mail/root | chown root:mail /var/spool/mail/root" > You can also determine what files were modified 2 days ago: > touch -t 201209172359 dummy > find / -name 'DS*' -newer dummy --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss