paulrstu

Thanks again. In RM I take the option F8 and it asks me if I want to delete. I confirm that I do. A dialogue box then fills most of the screen and at the top it says Delete. In the box it says var/log/messages.1 and at the bottom there is a choice Skip or Abort. I assumed this was just taking time to delete but it simply seems to disappear after a while and the file remains. I am beginning to wonder whether it is just me or is there something else I should be telling it to do? I assume not to take the options to Abort or to Skip.....but it does not seem Ignore the start of this thread. Thank you so much all of you for the more than fantastic and prompt help you have given. I eventually succeded in getting into the correct directories and deleting huge files which were residing there. The machine now boots up and is working normally. A cause of concern is how on earth the files came to be there in the first place and is there any software that I can run to ensure no repetition. As I say I really do appreciate the input and help. Words cannot express. As a newbie some things I really struggled with but am just pleased to have the beast up and running although my faith is diminished. What would I have done had I not had a spare windows machine to post to this group? Let's not go there but again thank you, thank you and thank you.

Can I delete syslog1 which would seem to free up 8520 meg? Also what about deleting messages1 or is that my message file? Thanks.

Okay. Have now done some research and it transpires that MC commands only work when you press the function key with that number and neither the number or the first letter of the command. Then got into kde and deleted kyocera file. When I ran the piece of code given for files larger than 10 megs less than 3 days old I was provided with four files. These were all in the VAR area. One was var/log/kernal/warnings1 which I could not browse to in MC. One was in syslog1. which states that the file is 8520 meg!! One was in syslog.1.gz which was 1322meg and one was in messages.1 which was also 8520 meg. Can I delete this stuff and will that help? Now in front of machine for another hour. Thanks again in anticipation.

Onto failsafe CD VAR. FILE OR DIRECTORY DOES NOT EXIST. USUAL NONSENSE. I HAVE TO GO AND BORROW A MACHINE THAT WORKS FOR WORK. Lesson learned. Thanks for all your input.

Console log in confirms no such file or directory as VAR yet I can browse to it in MC but cannot get any commands to run on it. Will now reboot and spend another ten minutes trying the same thing in failsafe log in. See if it exists there. If not then back to MC and I can look at the files and highlight in them but not delete anything. Brilliant so clever a system,.

I ran it exactly as you stated it. I really do not have the faintest clue. What is the difference between Failsafe log in and console log in? Do I log in as root or as myself? Why won't it let me delete anything? MC is just a GUI showing me the file system but none of the commands seem to work. I will try again to run the command you gave precoisely as you gave it having looked up how to do a | symbol. I will try and run it in console log in as root? It is madness. Nothing seems to work the way it ought too. Reinstall windows. Put the CD in and overwrite it and good night. I am guessing that the problem I have is simple so why do they make it so complicate just to afford a remedy. 36 hours now to delete a couple of files their software installed without seeking permission? That's secure. Okay going back onto the pile of crap and trying to retype precisely what you gave. In Windows of course it would probably work in safemode and I would simply highlight the text and paste it. I hate Windows with a passion and have delighted with Mandriva over the last year. The way this is going I will be a convert back to the scumbags in Seattle.

Here we go again. This time I have tried cf whilst being in failsafe rather than console log in: It states Dev/HDA6 39G 39G 100% / Dev/HDA7 97G 3.4G 4% /home Dev HDA1 9.8G 141M 2% /mnt/windows When I try to runfind/mount-size+10M-ctime-3 it says file or directory not found. No doubt I am meant to be running this somewhere else but Mandriva keep that quiet. More fun to have people playing with code than using software I assume. Insofar as VARmountpoint and VAR/tmp is concerned. No idea where to find them or how to find them and no guidance from Mandriva as usual. Will keep bodging along and listening to your suggestions which are all much appreciated and without which the machine would be off the desk by now. I hate this XP Professional but at least it works.

You are correct about the / . The output on DF is precisely what I have typed in nothing more or less. It is a single line. var/tmp Any clues where I might find that file?

I really do not understand this. It certainly is blank. At the top there is a line saying Size etc. and underneath there is nothing hence I used the term blank. That was the whole of the output DF. The difficulty is that whilst I appreciate your advice I have not the faintest clue as to where to find var/ whatever or where to delete it. Or how to delete it or anything. I have not deleted stuff under var/tmp because I have no idea where to find it let alone delete stuff in it. I will go back to the pile of **** and try wandering around and getting nowhere for an hour then let you know how much further I haven't progressed. It really seems crap and not remotely intuitive or logical.

If it boots in Verbose mode a line appears which states "Warning Free space for </> is 0 which is inferior to 20000." It all seems to come back to dev/hda6. Is there no simple way of viewing it and deleting whatever tripe has automatically downloaded? Thanks again. Monday morning and being without it whilst popping email accounts using jbmail is a bit annoying.

I can get the results of df /dev/hda6 which are exactly the same as stated above. I cannot find the hieroglyphics on the keyboard to input the rest of the code you give starting from the straight up and down line and continuing du -/tmp In respect of df /dev/hda6 it shows Size 39G, Used 39G, Avail 0 Used 100 per cent Mounted on is blank If I change the directory to tmp and then do DU it says: 1.0k ./mc-paul 1.0k ./kde-paul 2.0k ./ksocket-paul 5.0k If I log in as root and do the same DU command the output is similar. I do not know how to do the line of command you sent but what seems certain is that a drive is 39gig full and the other drives are less than 4% full. I do not store much and can only think some automatic downloading has filled a drive dev/hda6 Another day off line.

I will do that and then type it up. Thanks.

dev/hda6 remains filled to 39 gigabyte capacity with whatever. Went into failsafe. Navigated to root tmp having logged in as root. Got the file name you suggested and not much in it apart from a couple of files I could not delete ./ and .//. Found another file with something called "secret cookie" sitting there. Deleted that too. I think the step back and take a deep breath is good advice. They say Linux is logical. It isn't. This is just crazy. It seems a partition on my hard disc has 39 gigs of rubbish which Mandriva let happen without any consent. It ought to be simply to navigate to that partition and delete the crap. It is far from simple. I appreciate the help. Luckily I backed up some of the important documents on a caddy that I can poke into this Windows machine. Well done to Mandriva. Thanks for your help again and if there is any way of dealing with the 39 gig partition much appreciated. I had many problems with Windows over the years. All of them you could work through. This is just total nonsense. The Mandriva box has three partitions and two of them are at 2 and 4 per cent. The sda6 partition is 100 per cent full. I just cannot accept that after a year of telling people how good it is and Openoffice.org you suddenly realise it is probably just a complicated bodge not thought out. Really appreciate your prompt and helpful replies but I feel best left now till the morning and then I can throw water over it and see what happens!!

Just continuing to bang my head against a brick wall. I have visited the temporary directories and cannot find their alleged huge group of files. When I run df it tells me that the disc on hda6 is 39 gigs and all 39 gigs are full. The other two partitions have 2% usage and 4% usage. I am assuming that one of their wonderful upgrades means that downloads have flooded hda6 to the point it cannot function. Is there no way of browsing to partition hd6 and just deleting the rubbish or is it designed to spend countless hours deleting individual files which make no difference at all to the problem? It cannot be as hard as I am making it out too be. On the other hand maybe it is and maybe that is why Windows is so successful. I did nothing wrong other than go away for a day and turn my machine off. I did notice that last week the screensaver had ceased to work and it was having a problem printing which I now put down to the inability of hda6 to cope. If anyone has not lost the will to live and can suggest any alternate way of spending my Sunday it would be appreciated. I paid for my copy of Mandriva. Mug I must be.

MC is superbly familiar. The only problem is I haven't a clue which tmp file I am looking at and none of them have any obvious signs of a problem. I will keep messing around with MC. I have only been using the box for a year and have a years work on it. The amount of time being wasted on it over the last few days is having a tendency to drive me back to Mr Gates but I will try again and if I lose everything so be it. Lesson will be learned. Thanks again for the MC tip. I will try deleting anything that looks like it ought to be deleted in any tmp directory I find and then throw it out the f****** window if it does not work.

Thanks for your time and help. I started Failsafe again Input as you suggested and it came up with four lines of text. The first was refusing to delete tmp file snd stating something like ICE Unix Operation not permitted. The next three lines were skmilar refusing to delete DDELOG file and operation not permitted. I noticed two things firstly that I seem to have a temporary file in my own user area and secondly that the system also has a temporary file. out of curiosity I then tried the MKDIR command and it stated that, of course, it could not comply as there was an existing directory by that name. It is perplexing for me and I am not that far off a silver surfer! Late on a Sunday night and still trying hard!

Tried that. It won't allow it and says sometimes that file name is not found and on another occasion that directories are not empty. I have never encountered a more unhelpful system to address problems. At least in XP you can get into Safe mode and try to do something. I am back to square one. The Mandriva background is up proudly displaying the message The following installation problem was detected while trying to start KDE. Temp directory (temp) is out of disk space. KDE is unable to start. Now if that was Windows one would start in safe mode and delete the files. Here in Mandriva land I cannot even navigate to the files to delete them. I don't want to be using this or any windows machine. Any other help appreciated.,

Many thanks. I have tried that and am left with about seventy files which it refuses to delete saying they are directories. Three of the files include references to my name and my children and I am guessing they are passwor related. gcofd-paul is one such name. The other files either begin jpsock or are just odd names such as fileOb08yE and it sees these as directories. Guidance still appreciated as it gives me the same answer when trying to boot.

I have been running Mandriva for about a year now and it has been pretty good. Last week some problems occurred and I turned it off and went to reboot. When it attempts to boot it fails and gives me a message that "temp directory (/temp) is out of disk space kde is unable to start". I am more than a bit green but have browsed around and discovered that hda6 is 100 per cent full. This is not the home directory. I think that something has filled that partition but do not know where to start. Net research tells me to run failsafe and I did that but instead of help just got a terminal window inviting me to pretend I know linuc a bit like DOS! Any clues how to fix much appreciated. [moved from Software by spinynorman - welcome aboard :)]