I use Simple Backup program that comes as default with Ubuntu for backing up my home folder. I had problems with this software on and off for the past few months. It fills the var/backup folder sometimes when it can’t find the backup medium and that fills up my “/” (root) partition. I then have to go and manually delete those files to get the space back.
I set the software to backup files to my Maxtor OneTouch4 external hard drive. Ubuntu mounts the drive as OneTouch4, but sometimes it mounts it as OneTouch4_. I’m not sure if it’s due to multiple accounts being used in the desktop, but the mount point changes. Ubuntu mounts it automatically, so it’s not part of the fstab file. This happened 3 or 4 times during which the backup program ran. Since the program couldn’t find OneTouch4, it created a folder under /media with that name and created the backup there, thus filling up my “/” root partition. I used the disk analyzer, but I couldn’t figure out how the partition was full. Though the disk analyzer showed OneTouch4, I thought it was pointing to the external hard drive. I didn’t realize it was a folder under media in the root partition. It took me several minutes before I figured that out. Once I realized that, I went and deleted the OneTouch4 directory. The directory was gone, but the root partition was still showing 100% used. I couldn’t locate where the file went and I didn’t know how to clear the root’s trash folder. I finally found out that the deleted files went to /root/.local/share/Trash/files directory. The problem was, Trash folder’s permission won’t allow you to move into that directory or look at the content. I had to change the permission using chmod command and get into Trash and files directory. Once I emptied the Trash/files directory, I got all my space back on my root partition. Woof!!! What a pain. Once deleted, I went and changed the permission back to how it was for Trash and files directories. I, now, set the backup to run manually and I make sure OneTouch4 is my external hard drive before I run the backup.
I have the same problem with rsync. But i dont have a .local/Trash Folder. Iam running a server without UI. Where can I locate those files? There are not in var/backups
Thanks.
On my system backups would be in var/backup, not var/backups.
Another Mike
Thanks, it worked like a breeze! After installing a 320 gig drive to hold several virtual machines on my laptop, my space was down to 13 gigs; my backup program had been saving to a root owned folder with the same name as my external 500gig drive! Ugh, what a pain to fix this.
Thanks for the post. It helped a lot!
Hello,
I had some similar problems with SimpleBackup/Restore. I found that selecting the option of purging backups older that 30 days in Simple Backup Config solved the problem for me.
mike
p.s. There are other though more complicated purging options available there.
Thanks for the tip Mike.
Is there a GUI for rsync? Is it just a plain file transfer program or does it do automatic backups?
I had the same issue: mysteriously “full” root partition after using SimpleBackup. It’s been a while, so I don’t remember the exact steps, but I had to login as root, delete the backup dir, stop the process running the gvfs-fuse daemon, delete the gvfs-fuse hidden dirs, and so on. I went to file a bug report, and found out dozens of people have had similar issues. I’ve been using plain old rsync instead of SimpleBackup.
I’m not sure why the Ubuntu devs are being so laid back about major problems in what is supposed to be an LTS release!