How do I get free space? The trash can is empty

Question

I do not have enough free disk space. 2,280MB of free space is needed, at least 781MB needs to be freed on / partition. How do I get free space? The trash can is empty.

Answer 1

Without more details about your system, I really can't help you with what to remove.

Plus, they're your files and thus you'd have to make the final decision about what to do with the space anyways (deleting files, etc.)

What I can do, however, is show you a quick way to get a graphical breakdown of all of your files and the space they're taking.

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Open the Unity dash by clicking the Ubuntu logo with the swirly things:

or by pressing the Windows/Super key.

Once the dash is open, just type in Disk Usage and select Disk Usage Analyzer:

Note, your icon will look a little different - I've got the Numix Circle icon theme. Just click on the application titled Disk Usage Analyzer.

Once it's open, you should see a window that looks similar to this one:

It lists all files & folders on the left from largest to smallest, as well as a graphical visualization of it on the right.

Have a poke around in this tool, it's very useful for finding stuff that's taking up space.

Answer 2

Test this:

Open a terminal by hitting Ctrl+Alt+T.

Run the following commands:

sudo -i
apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean
apt-get install --reinstall deborphan aptitude
deborphan
aptitude --purge remove `deborphan`
deborphan –-libdevel
aptitude --purge remove `deborphan --libdevel`
dpkg --purge `COLUMNS=300 dpkg -l | egrep "^rc" | cut -d' ' -f3`
OLDCONF=$(dpkg -l|grep "^rc"|awk '{print $2}')
CURKERNEL=$(uname -r|sed 's/-*[a-z]//g'|sed 's/-386//g')
LINUXPKG="linux-(image|headers|ubuntu-modules|restricted-modules)"
METALINUXPKG="linux-(image|headers|restricted-modules)-(generic|i386|server|common|rt|xen)"
OLDKERNELS=$(dpkg -l|awk '{print $2}'|grep -E $LINUXPKG |grep -vE $METALINUXPKG|grep -v $CURKERNEL)
aptitude purge $OLDCONF
aptitude purge $OLDKERNELS
rm -rf /home/*/.local/share/Trash/*/** &> /dev/null
rm -rf /root/.local/share/Trash/*/** &> /dev/null