The current home directory gets full.
Can I assign more disk space to the home directory somehow or are there any other solutions?
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Are you looking for storage of personal files? Is this a PC or laptop?– peckMar 1, 2011 at 18:21
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Is your home folder on its own partition?– ændrükMar 1, 2011 at 20:06
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5 Answers
I'm assuming your home directory is located on the same partition as your system. Instead of enlarging the system partition you could source the home directory out to an extra partition. That's good practice anyway. Makes it a lot easier to migrate to a new system without having to move the home directory.
Free some space or get an extra HDD. Create a new partition and format it with a filesystem of your choice (i.e. ext4). Copy everything from your home folder to the new partition and then tell your system to mount the new partition in your home directory during startup by adding a corresponding line to /etc/fstab:
UUID=<some UID of your new partition> /home/username ext4 nodev,nosuid 0 1
Depending on the filesystem and mount options you might want to use this line can slightly differ.
Making symbolic link is an excellent option in case you just need to keep the file in the required directory but dont have enough space in that directory.
If you are running a dual boot install try using gparted (on the install disk) to shrink the windows partition and enlarge the Ubuntu partition.
If not try using the disk usage analyzer (Applications -> Accessories -> Disk Usage Analyzer) to possibly find large files that you don't need anymore and can delete.
If you can't do that perhaps purchase an additional storage device such as a USB drive or another hard disk to use for file storage.
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How can i enlarge the ubuntu partition without destroy th e files in the current home directory?– user8260Mar 1, 2011 at 13:15
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Use gparted. It comes on the install disk (in the administrative menu). Right click on the other partition and select resize and shrink it then right click on the ubuntu partition and expand it. Warning!! There is always a slight chance something may go wrong in the partitioning so be careful. The safest way (although not as convenient) is to use another storage medium Mar 1, 2011 at 13:29
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3I think you can't resize partitions while they're mounted, so you will have to boot from LiveCD, for example, and then run GParted on your harddrive. Mar 1, 2011 at 15:07
One solution as already proposed is to use gparted and repartition the disk.
Another possibility, if you have not allocated already all the disk space to active filesystems, is to take advantage of the LVM system and extend the /home partition (if you have used LVM when you created the filesystems)
A quick-and-dirty solution can be to create a subdirectory on a filesystem that has free space and then symlink inside the home directory e.g. (supposing /data has free space, and joeuser is running out of space, /data/extend_homes will contains all the extensions for users in need of large extra diskspace)
# mkdir -p /data/extend_homes/joeuser
# chown joeuser:users /data/extend_homes/joeuser
# ln -s /data/extend_homes/joeuser /home/joeuser/extraspace
Joeuser should be now able to write in ~/extraspace without filling /home. Admittedly, it's not a pretty solution, but it can buy you time while planning for a major reshaping/repartitioning of the system.
Install kuser, then run it as super user (use sudo) and change the home directory to somewhere outside of /home where you have more space.
