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First time using linux/ubuntu, so pardon the noobiness.

I created a boot disk and booted from it using the 'try' method. I've barely done anything and I'm getting error messages stating that I have low disk space (on the desktop/home folder). AFAIK, I have no real disk space issues so I presume it's some kind of partitioning matter (though I really don't know).

When I try to trace back directories on the home folder - I can't get beyond "File System" or "Home", and when I try to get some indication from Gparted I can not find any drive labeled 'Home' or the like.

How do I find where the home folder is located? How can I re-partition it or somehow increase its potential size?

This is driving me absolutely nuts. Thank you to anyone who can help.

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3 Answers 3

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The simplest way is to open the System Monitor by clicking the dash icon (top left) and entering System Monitor as the search. When it opens, click the File Systems tab and it will show you where everything is placed.

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/dev stands for device. HDDs will normally be named SDA, SDB, SDC, etc.

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The above shows 3 HDDs and 1 DVD rom. My linux installation is on HDD "b" (Hence, dev/sdb) and includes 3 partitions, one for Root "/dev/sdb/", one for boot "/dev/sdb/boot" and one for home "/dev/sdb/home".

A second way of determining would be to use fdisk. Open a terminal (Press ControlAltT), enter sudo fdisk -l and input your password when prompted. It will output your drives and how they are configured.

enter image description here

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  • Thanks. James :-) Nice and simple. Unfortunately, when I check out System Monitor, there is no drive listed with /home directory beside it (as in yours). See here: i.imgur.com/2MB9Mxq.png
    – user220601
    Nov 30, 2013 at 1:50
  • @user220601 this means that your /home is part of root.
    – hildred
    Nov 30, 2013 at 2:00
  • @hildred Ok. Then I guess my original problem and question now applies to "root".
    – user220601
    Nov 30, 2013 at 2:06
  • looking at the screenshot you provided your root filesystem is on a union filesystem where there are two under filesystems, a read only filesystem on the cd and a read/write filesystem which I think is on your usb drive. you appear to have space on another drive, but I don't know which is which, so It is time for some old fashion system administration, either setting up a partition for home on another drive or creating a directory for home on another partition and using a symbolic link.
    – hildred
    Nov 30, 2013 at 2:32
  • Thanks again for the help. Ok, I'll have a go at moving my home folder using these steps: askubuntu.com/questions/21321/move-home-folder-to-second-drive if this doesn't work, I am ready to give up on ubuntu for now. I don't understand why I'm having the low disk space error, and I can't even get a good look at this home/root directory to see which drive it's on or how much space there is. This seems like it should be a simple matter - I don't understand why it's been so difficult so far.
    – user220601
    Nov 30, 2013 at 2:48
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In terminal

df /home

or for another path

df /some/other/path

If you have more than 2 drives, you can check this by running df some_path for a path on each drive. When you do this, df should return different responses for the different paths on different drives.

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Fire up a terminal and type df and press enter. This will give a list of all drives, how much free space they have and where they are mounted. your home directory is probably in the form of /home/username/ where username is your username. If you have a separate drive for home directories it will probably be mounted on /home, but based on how your question was asked, I suspect that everything is on the flash drive and it is almost full, and that your next question will be how do I move my home directory to a different drive.

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  • Thanks for your response, hildred. Unforunately when I enter "du", the only responses I get are "./.cache/..." and "./Desktop/..." (no /home/<username>/). See my other comment for an image of space on my flash drive. I had looked at moving my home directory before asking this question, but decided I'd like to locate it first.
    – user220601
    Nov 30, 2013 at 1:50
  • oops. my typo I ment df not du.
    – hildred
    Nov 30, 2013 at 1:57
  • Ah. Well here is my situation for df, if you care to see: i.imgur.com/Z7yQQfP.png Once again, no obvious "/home" sector.
    – user220601
    Nov 30, 2013 at 2:04

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