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I'm a relatively basic user, using the Ubuntu terminal for Windows. I have a failing deployment caused by a lack of disk space on the VM I'm connected to in the terminal:

df -h

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/sda1        30G   30G     0 100% /

/dev/ exists as a regular directory. I then see sda1 as a block device file:

ls -l

brw-rw---- 1 root disk      8,   1 Aug 12 01:31 sda1

(See https://superuser.com/questions/1240857/is-dev-sda1-a-directory/1594704#1594704 for an explanation of a block file).

How do I investigate what's filling up the block, and remove unneccessary data?

If I cd sda1 I get Not a directory

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    sda1 will be your disk, /dev is a DEVICE directory and POSIX (or older UNIX) philosophy says everything is treated as a file. The first "b" in the directory shows it's a BLOCK device and you're chasing down the wrong places.. Look for files that are using space, not devices. (FYI: that device will use none of your disk space; it's more a logical item that represents the whole disk; if you find your keyboard - it likewise will use no disk space!) – guiverc Oct 16 '20 at 1:09
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    fyi: I should have said partition, sda would be the disk, sda1 is the partition on the disk – guiverc Oct 16 '20 at 1:25
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/dev/sdaN is not a directory, but a reference to the Nth partition of your hard drive. df -h shows that /dev/sda1 is mounted on /. If you want to see what is taking up space on a device, you look in that device's mount point, in this case /.

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  • Thanks @Pixelated Fish. If I try du -s /* in the root as described here - unix.stackexchange.com/a/125430/204761, I get a lot of cannot read directory ... Permission denied messages, and none of the directories that can be read appear to have significant disk usage. Any ideas? – Chris Halcrow Oct 16 '20 at 1:33
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    You can avoid the permission denied error by omitting the *, as it will search directories you, well... don't have permission to :) You can also try running it as root by placing sudo at the beginning of the command. You can also edit your answer and post the result there. – Pixelated Fish Oct 16 '20 at 1:35
  • Thanks @Pixelated Fish - this helped me locate the problem - I've updated the question – Chris Halcrow Oct 16 '20 at 2:52
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I realised /dev/sda1 is mounted on / - @Pixelated Fish's answer explains this is the 1st partition of the hard drive. So now I can

sudo du -s /, which reveals that something in the \var\ directory is the culprit. Drilling down I find that \var\lib\docker is the issue - which made me suspect that old docker images from automated deployments aren't being removed, which is answered in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32723111/how-to-remove-old-and-unused-docker-images.

I also did sudo -s, cd \ and df -h, which then showed the exact culprit directory (I'm not sure why this worked, when df -h without being the root user didn't). It turned out log files were the issue. I can cd to the folder and rm * to clear out the files.

The following question has approaches around locating what's taking up disk space:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/125429/tracking-down-where-disk-space-has-gone-on-linux

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  • When using docker, make a script that prunes unused images on a weekly basis. – Artur Meinild Oct 16 '20 at 7:03

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