What to do when the root partition is full?

Posted by lloyd on Tue 17 Feb 2009 at 12:08

I just upgraded from an older version of Lenny to latest. When the upgrade finished, an alert appeared noting that root partition is full. As a consequence of this problem (I think) I can't save or print Open Office documents.

Here's what df shows:

lloyd@Cube1:~$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1              6728280   6670808         0 100% /
tmpfs                   242168         0    242168   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                     10240        68     10172   1% /dev
tmpfs                   242168         0    242168   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda6             70651388  12484248  54578224  19% /home
overflow                  1024        16      1008   2% /tmp

My disk usage analyzer tells me I've used 24.8% e.g. 18.3 GB out of 73.8 GB.

I've found references on the net on how to expand the root partition, but would like to query for lastest info and technique.

What's the safest way to expand the root partition?
Many thanks,

This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL (along with associated comments):

http://www.debian-administration.org/article/What_to_do_when_the_root_partition_is_full