Firefox 3.6.13 Tools/Downloads

[#1]

Had a spare hour and tried to follow instructions with these results:-
ls lha /      gave a listing of some files with a total size of 96K  therefor not containg a vast amount.
sudo du -sh /var/backup  only two files of backup 2010 01 & 22 totalling 881M  There have been other backups since then but not listed here.
sudo du -sh /home 760M
                /tmp    36k
                /dev    100k
                /home/colin/.gvfs-fuse-daemon    Access denied.  all not abnormal. Where else might I look?
Tried the directory quoted in Arun's Blog on the subject got no such directory.
I have a few backups of /home/, /usr/local/, /etc/  the latest dated 2010 12 on a USB 16GB stick. If I clear my HD out and start again with a clean instal of 10.04.1. I should be able to put that on a new /home in a separate partition, if formed during instalation. Is this possible rather than trying to find where all thes files  actally are ? 8.04 seems to be so battered that restoration could be impossible.  I will look at Mint to see what that offers as a replacement  if this would be recommended. I do have a Live CD of Mint 9.

[#2]

O.K. How about

sudo find / -type f -size +600M

This will reveal all your big files...
It may take several minutes to run...

[#3]

Quote from: colintivy

I have a few backups of /home/, /usr/local/, /etc/  the latest dated 2010 12 on a USB 16GB stick. If I clear my HD out and start again with a clean instal of 10.04.1. I should be able to put that on a new /home in a separate partition, if formed during instalation. Is this possible rather than trying to find where all thes files  actally are ? 8.04 seems to be so battered that restoration could be impossible.   I will look at Mint to see what that offers as a replacement  if this would be recommended. I do have a Live CD of Mint 9.

Your /home/username directory contains files which hold personalised application settings (in hidden files).
/etc contains system wide configuration settings.
It's quite likely that 8.04 is still upgradeable
The ideal situation is to create separate partitions for / and /home (of the correct size )
Install any extra packages you use...
Custom install 10.04.1 and recreate your data files from backups.
In future you can perform upgrades and /home will be protected against system changes.

[#4]

Thanks for encouraging reply. I will have a go at the cmd line when I have a few minutes. My backups were made using Simple Backup and are in zip files, do I need to use Simple Restore to extract them or just plain unzip?

[#5]

I'd try to locate the cause of your file overflow first.
I have only used simple file restore to restore a very few files at a time - it's got lots of protection against accidental overwrites etc of the wrong files, but it's very cumbersome.
Don't unzip your files onto a USB key - it will have a Win32 filesystem and you will lose all ownership & security info.
You should be able to use a linux unzip program to unzip those files, but use a view type mode to check it works...

[#6]

My backups on USB stick are in ext3. Laptop is entirely Ubuntu. I am looking at getting the backups into a new /home when it is on its own partition. All this is in the future after I have sorted the location of the unneccesary files and have got rid of them. I have not tried your latest sudo to find them, SWMBO is first on list!!
Regards
C.

[#7]

Ref reply #16 Sudo find did just that. There are 3 sets of all the data that I have ever backedup in /home/Media /disk amounting to a lot of space. (my USB sticks are not mounted and are on the shelf!)  I have looked at these files but notice that the option of deleting them is not available on right click. I have looked up sudo rm and it looks potentially dangerous, is there a safer way to get rid of the files that I ought to use?
I have Nutshell which I have found to be a bit too A level right now but Ubuntu Unleashed 2008 has what seems to be a good primer chapter on Bash. You will see that I am getting a bit better???? Some of its eg's are unclear however.
C, 

[#8]

There is a more visual way to do this...
From a command entry screen or terminal type

sudo nautilus

You now have a GUI screen, looking at your files with root privileges - and you can delete etc anything.
Press CTRL+H so that you see any hidden directories/files
Navigate to whatever you want to delete and press the delete key!
If you just want to delete that \home\Media\disk directory entirely, just delete the disk directory.
Hopefully, Nautilus will say it can't save the deleted items in the wastebasket - but if it does, you can tell it to empty your wastebasket.
Close Nautilus.
You will now see some scary lines in your terminal window, which say that Nautilus was unhappy (but they don't matter).
You may even be locked out from data entry in the terminal window - so press CTRL+C to fix it.
Please note, running GUI programs like this, as root is strongly NOT recommended!
BTW Try System -> Admin -> System Monitor (File Systems tab) - as a normal user - to look at disk usage.

[#9]

Had a bit of time to progress matters but I am still puzzled. sudo nautilus worked fine and three files in /media/disk were deleted and wastebasket emptied. sudo find still showed /dev/sda1 to be full but with 1GB less used. This time 3 files were listed with clearly  the backup files but  in the form of /root/.local/share/Trash/files/... . Going round the listing and nautilus circuit always shows these  as file/directory not found. Reading Arun's blog again showed that he eventually found similar files  and deleted them with a satisfactory result but he does not say how he did that. Any ideas?
I also note that it seems impossible to look inside /dev/sda1 for some reason.

[#10]

You can't look "inside" streams like the /dev set. You need to mount them somewhere then look at the mounted stream.
So as root "mount /dev/sda1 my_folder" then look in my_folder.
Looks like you have files that are in the trash but not been deleted, maybe a different user/previous version?

[#11]

Quote from: colintivy

Reading Arun's blog again showed that he eventually found similar files  and deleted them with a satisfactory result but he does not say how he did that. Any ideas?

Try force-deleting them from within (sudo) nautilus; highlight the files in /root/.local/share/Trash/files/ and hit shift & delete keys together.

[#12]

Personally, I would expect that using sudo nautilus to delete the /root/.local/share/Trash directory will free up the space safely.
Trash directories appear to get re-created as needed (although a reboot might be needed to reconnect any new Trashes to your wastebasket).
I have deleted Trash directories from external disks with no ill effects. 

[#13]

A mixed bag of replies.
@ H B  I tried to look at /dev/sda1 but was thwarted by the full disk. I cannot create a file or directory to use the method you supplied because there is no room at the Inn! Good idea if  space was available.
@ Waldo.  Because the find command as recommended by Jeremy did reveal the 3 Trash files that are causing the problem, I expected that the  Nautilus Search facility would locate them as well and allow me to delete them. I used the full path of one of them for the search which seemed to take as long as the find command but it failed to produce anything. I checked with find and they were still there. So again I drew a blank.
@ Jeremy.  I note that my deletion of the original back-up files using Nautilus was successful and a decrease of the disk use of 1GB was quoted by df -h, I know that these files actually totalled about 4GB which is a bit odd.  Also I now find that the find command no longer finds the 3 Trash files but the disk still shows as full ie 100% despite the use reducing by 1GB, so they are not deleted, all very odd.
8.04 looks so tatty now that I am considering giving up on trying to correct the problem(s) that I have and use Live CD of 10.04 to start again. Here I assume that gparted will have the facility for me to put /home on its own partition at the start. This will leave me the job of getting my valuable files from the USB stick, unzipping them and trying to rebuild files in the new /home. Do you think that is a possible way forward?

[#14]

Sounds like you need to run a fsck on it. Difficult if it is full 
If you have everything backed up then go ahead and wipe it using gparted.
Don't choose the Install from the boot menu but boot to the cd then run gparted.
Delete all the partitions then start again.
10->30Gb is good for / and the rest for /home with a swap of around 1Gb (or so depends on how much ram you have in the system but 1Gb is reasonable.)
Then run the install and choose Manual Partitioning when offered.

[#15]

It seems that some previous posts did indeed suggest starting again. Before I get on with that I have looked at the Mint pages and note that 9 in various guises and 10 are now available. Because my machine sits firmly in the old bracket, the lightness of Mint impresses. Would you sugeest that 9 in some form would be an advantage or go to 10 anyway?? I am steeped in Ubuntu/Gnome right now and do not want to relearn too much by changing. There is a lot of commonality in the 9 versions which would you plump for?