On 1/31/26 19:21, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
I am running debian 12 on a HP computer and a samsung monitor. I have
been getting messages about var getting smaller and smaller. I went on
line and found what seemed to be an easy job so I printed it out. Then
came the fun. It is called How to clear var space in Linux - Best
practices for freeing up disk space. from ITSMARTTRICKS.
Is this the page you are referring to?
https://www.itsmarttricks.com/clear-var-space-in-linux/
The very first command df -Th /var would not work with or with out the
security password. I am at a loss.
Please post your console session. For example:
2026-02-01 09:04:52 dpchrist@laalaa ~
$ df -Th /var
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/sdb3_crypt ext4 12G 9.5G 1.8G 85% /
I have a sdd in the computer and a
samsung 2 GB attached for all back ups I need.
Any help you can offer me would be greatly appreciated.
Maureen
I update my machines monthly, or as needed. If everything works after
restarting, I remove and clean unused packages. This frees disk space
on /var. Note that you will need a root shell, or sudo(8):
2026-01-24 20:19:02 root@laalaa ~
# apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2026-01-24 20:20:18 root@laalaa ~
# apt-get autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Del thunderbird 1:140.6.0esr-1~deb11u1 [72.1 MB]
Del libgimp2.0 2.10.22-4+deb11u4 [3601 kB]
Del python3-urllib3 1.26.5-1~exp1+deb11u2 [115 kB]
Del firefox-esr 140.6.0esr-1~deb11u1 [76.5 MB]
Del gimp-data 2.10.22-4+deb11u4 [16.8 MB]
Del libsnmp40 5.9+dfsg-4+deb11u2 [2551 kB]
Del libsnmp-base 5.9+dfsg-4+deb11u2 [1736 kB]
Del gimp 2.10.22-4+deb11u4 [7182 kB]
I also trim the SSD. Be patient -- this takes several minutes:
2026-01-24 20:20:26 root@laalaa ~
# time fstrim -a -v
/scratch: 23.5 GiB (25227034624 bytes) trimmed on /dev/mapper/sdb4_crypt
/boot: 801.8 MiB (840699904 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sda1
/: 2.6 GiB (2778947584 bytes) trimmed on /dev/mapper/sdb3_crypt
real 3m11.999s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m1.612s
David
