[vox-tech] I'm out of space on /

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jay Strauss (me at heyjay.com):

> dpkg: error processing 
> /var/cache/apt/archives/kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686_2.6.8-16
> _i386.deb (--unpack):
>  failed in buffer_write(fd) (8, ret=-1): backend dpkg-deb during 
> `./lib/modules/
> 2.6.8-2-686/kernel/sound/pci/trident/snd-trident-synth.ko': No space 
> left on device
> 
> I don't know what's taking up space and what I can delete.

More often than not, it's accumulation of packages in
/var/cache/apt/archives/ .  Try "apt-get autoclean" to sweep out
packages no longer useful to keep there, or "apt-get clean" to
ruthlessly purge the cache.

> I did a
> 
> hydrogen:/# du -hxs *

I suspect that including "x" sabotaged your intent, there, since, if
memory serves, it limits the report to subdirectories on just the one
filesystem you happen to specify, and omits all others.  So, if your
current directory at that time -- which I gather must have been the root
directory -- was on a filesystem didn't include /var, then the report
wouldn't tell you anything about that subtree.

If my guess is correct about the package cache, you might just make a
point of using one of the apt commands to clean out the cache on
occasion.  Note that some of the higher-level tools (that call apt-get)
will take care of that housekeeping for you.