Hi Half_life
this is a perfect explanation for an undiscovered failure where maloperation and system dullness goes hand in hand:
I had to recover files from system backup which is stored on an external USB-HDD mounted in /media/hdd_mobil/
For security purposes I did remove the HDD but I did not attach a new one. Additionally I was about to leave for a two weeks vaccation to a tiny tropical island. As the Island does not even have internet
, there was no need to re-attach the backup HDD before end of holydays: The conserved data on the backup HDD were stored securely
.
But without the USB-HDD the scheduled Zentyal backups failed. I did not even think about that Zentyal would prepare a service directory that might grow up day by day - as there was no HDD, changes were noticed or "backed up" in /var/cache/zentyl/duplicity and nothing was cleaned or removed in the mean time. /var/ grow larger and larger.
Then, back at home after two weeks of sun and sea, I forgot to re-attach the USB-HDD. Washing of cloth and paying bills of two weeks was more important than working on (presumably unimportant) computer backup HDDs. On the fourth day after return, all Zentyal service stopped as described.
The root case - as you discoverd - was an overcrowed root (/var/) directory.
...
OK. Back to the problem: I added another 10 GB to respective logical volume mounted as /var/ via LVM. Cleaning of other cache areas by apt-get autoremove and autoclean gave another 4 GB. The system is now back on duty - execpt for user corner and jabber (I do not know why).
Also I will clean the backup by cleaning up the backup-HDD and reconfiguring the backup service. Additionally I will reduce size of /srv/ which is obviously to large for just my web-page php installations (1x drupal, 1x piwik + some redirected web-pages). This will give release enough space for future purposes within LVM if necessary.
I forgot to mention: I love LVM
Best regards
Thorsten
PS: If you have any idea on the jabber / user corner issue, I would be glad, but this is not urgent.