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I'm an amateur user of Linux with no idea whatsoever on terminals and command lines. A year back I was looking to switch over to FOSS and installed Ubuntu Budgie because I felt at ease with its graphical interface. A year later, I'm stuck on the login screen and despite entering the right password, the screen good blank for a couple of seconds and reverts to the login screen. I searched this forum to find the root cause, and on shifting to the terminal from the login screen and checking all possible sources of error (eg. Ownership of a file called XAuthority, checking configuration of root file, etc), the next step i was told was to remove and reinstall gdm3. I removed it successfully, but on trying to reinstall it, I was told that there was not enough disk space. Running the df -h command in the terminal (i got the command only after a Google search, I'm that much of a rookie when it comes to Linux) showed me the problem.

output of df -h :

output of df -h attached

As per the Google search result I also ran the command du -hs * | sort -hr and got a result as attached.

Output attached

Can anyone help me to recover Ubuntu and go back to the GUI? I need the files I have saved to the user directory like Documents, Downloads, etc. C

karel
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KARTHIK K
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  • To free some space you might do as described here - but in a terminal. You should be able to login via GUI afterwards – kanehekili Aug 05 '23 at 16:38
  • You do not have a large / (root) at 14GB. And you have a lot of snaps, which take more space than standard apps. I am using Kubuntu and do not allow snaps and use about 16GB. One user posted that his snaps took 20GB on their own. Snaps save several verions, so grow a lot. You also have a large /home. It it being used or are you saving data in a /home inside your / ? – oldfred Aug 05 '23 at 17:27
  • @kanehekili : thank you for your reply. I tried the journalctl --vacuum-time=2d and sudo rm -v /var/log/log commands through the terminal but couldn't free any space. It says 0 bytes of archived journals freed. I'm still unable to reinstall gdm3 because it says i don't have enough space in /car/cache/apt/ archives. I have no idea what this means or what i should do from here to recover my data. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you. – KARTHIK K Aug 06 '23 at 09:23
  • @oldfred Thank you for your reply. I have no idea what you intend to ask. I installed Ubuntu by looking at a YouTube tutorial and allotted the size for each partition as explained in it. I'm guessing that by root, you mean /dev/sda5 since it is the partition having 14 gb (all of which is used up). Also, by snap, I'm guessing you mean the different softwares installed. How do I not allow snaps? Can you help me out? – KARTHIK K Aug 06 '23 at 09:42
  • @oldfred Also, most of my data is saved in the documents, downloads, pictures, etc. Directories of the user... From the screenshot I have uploaded, i now see that Home has been allotted 489 GB of which only 7.~ gb has been used. Is there any way to move my files (documents, downloads, etc) from the user directory to the home directory or an external hard drive , through the terminal? Can you please help? Thanks. – KARTHIK K Aug 06 '23 at 09:43
  • When you install and want more than just / (root), you use Something Else & have to choose it. That adds /home into fstab, so mounted with owership & permissions to use it. You can move /home, but have to be sure to copy all data first. Details, but have good backups first. Move Home & https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2455822&p=14010437#post14010437 I look at what apps I use and install the .deb versions. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1386455/can-i-remove-the-older-revision-package-of-duplicated-snap-packages – oldfred Aug 06 '23 at 13:39
  • @oldfred thank you for the response. Though I don't fully understand the technical concepts you've detailed, think i get a fair idea of what you're implying. I'll definitely check the links. Thanks again. Cheers. – KARTHIK K Aug 06 '23 at 17:44

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