There have been several instances in the past, where my Linux root mount will be running out of space. Today is just another instance of it. I was working on building a Conversational Chatbot to help people access my college’s website better. However, the database shuts down, as there is no space.

I start with df -h to get an idea about the available space.

Once that’s done, I go through a checklist

Uninstall any unused programs
sudo apt autoremove - Removes unused packages
Clear up the apt cache with sudo apt-get clean
Linux has a logging mechanism. Over time, these logs could take up quite a lot of space.
    Check the amount of space with journalctl --disk-usage
    Clear old logs with sudo journalctl --vaccum-time=3d
Snaps end up taking up a lot of space as well. They have their earlier revisions stored as well. To clear these, I run a script which is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
# Removes old revisions of snaps
# CLOSE ALL SNAPS BEFORE RUNNING THIS
set -eu
snap list --all | awk '/disabled/{print $1, $3}' |
while read snapname revision; do
    snap remove "$snapname" --revision="$revision"
done

I find the files that occupy the highest space with o du -a / | sort -n -r | head -n 20
I don't do this usually, but if I am desperate and fed up, I delete my old and unused versions of the Linux Kernel

These usually free up quite a lot of space. However, if these doesn’t work, I try extending the partition. Hope I at least get to complete the project right now. I will update this checklist if I find anything new.