Why does my filesystem appear to be full to Ubuntu?

Question

I have seen some questions and I know that Ubuntu reserves 5% of filesystem to root. Believe me this is not the case.

I was moving some files from my home folder to another partition and I had to cancel the copying process due to some reason (the copy didn't stop abruptly, I cancelled it). Now when I try to move the remaining files I get error Error opening file '/media/sda5/Android/carbon/external/icu4c/i18n/ucol_bld.h': No space left on device. The destination partition has 85Gb free and my source (Ubuntu home) partition has 12Gb free (total of 48Gb, 5% of 48 is not 12).

Is there any other reason why I might get this error? How do i fix it?

Note: The path from which I was moving had a lot of directories and sub-directories. (It was android source actually. So you can imagine.) I don't know if that information might be useful.

Edit: df -h | grep -v '^none' gives

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       48G   34G   12G  75% /
udev            3.9G  4.0K  3.9G   1% /dev
tmpfs           793M  1.4M  792M   1% /run
/dev/sda7        50G   50G  441M 100% /host
/dev/sda9        50G   34G   17G  68% /media/sda9
/dev/sda6       300G  281G   20G  94% /media/sda6
/dev/sda5       300G  221G   80G  74% /media/sda5

df -h -i | grep -v '^none' gives

Filesystem     Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       3.0M  874K  2.2M   29% /
udev             989K   578  989K    1% /dev
tmpfs            992K   655  991K    1% /run
/dev/sda7        505K    66  505K    1% /host
/dev/sda9         17M   38K   17M    1% /media/sda9
/dev/sda6         20M  110K   20M    1% /media/sda6
/dev/sda5         81M  1.1M   80M    2% /media/sda5

Please note that the partitions in question are /dev/loop0 and /dev/sda5

Edit 2:

I just noticed that I am even unable to create new documents in my partition /dev/sda5 (all the more reason to panic)

Edit 3: I fired sudo strace mv. Here is the output. I don't really understand it a lot.

Have you checked the hidden trash folders in your home as well as the other partition? — user68186, Apr 08 '14 at 19:41
I right-clicked and then saw "Properties" that gave me the free space. I guess that's the free space *including* the trash. — TheRookierLearner, Apr 08 '14 at 19:44
Run `dmesg | less` in a Terminal, and see if you can find any meaningful info there. If there is nothing useful in there, go to your `/var/log` folder and try to find the culprit in the log files. They have meaningful names, so you get the idea which one to check out. (You can browse them with a gui tool, like `sudo geany` or `sudo gedit`, if you prefer that way. `sudo ls /var/log` will list you the log files.) — Apache, Apr 08 '14 at 19:51
Please go into a terminal and add to the question the result of these two commands: `df -h | grep -v '^none'` and `df -h -i | grep -v '^none'`. This will give the account of space (the former) and inodes (basically, the number of files) of all filesystems excluding the virtual ones. — Rmano, Apr 08 '14 at 20:34
You have /host full, are you sure there is no need of it (like having some temporary directory in it)? --- Is /dev/loop0 an encrypted disk? I have little clue, it's quite a new configuration for me --- try to do `strace cp ...` to see exactly where it fails. Or maybe you have a big file open and deleted that is keep alive by some process and clogs you disk. Difficult to say. — Rmano, Apr 08 '14 at 21:07
`/dev/loop0` is not an encrypted disk. My Ubuntu is Wubi installed, though. I even restarted my laptop so I am not sure if the big file which, if at all might have been open, is still open now. — TheRookierLearner, Apr 08 '14 at 21:10
I fired `sudo strace mv ..` but honestly I can't make a lot out of output. Mind if I paste the output to pastebin? — TheRookierLearner, Apr 08 '14 at 21:16
Here is the output http://paste.ee/p/hic1K I don't really understand it a lot. — TheRookierLearner, Apr 08 '14 at 21:35
What directory were you in when you ran that cp command? Was it /media/sda5? If so, try creating a subdirectory and copying the files there instead. — psusi, Apr 09 '14 at 02:44
The android shared partition should have FAT32 filesystem. You should check it for errors in Windows using `chkdsk`. — Danatela, Apr 09 '14 at 02:48
@psusi - I was in home directory when I tried that command. Also I am not able to create any file/directory in /media/sda5 — TheRookierLearner, Apr 09 '14 at 02:49
@Danatela - Its NTFS. But thanks for the suggestion though. I'll do it. Will have to reboot my system. — TheRookierLearner, Apr 09 '14 at 02:51
@Danatela - Woohoo! Thanks! That helped. I ran `chkdsk E:/f` in Windows in an administrative `cmd` shell(it was my E: drive) and indeed, it found some errors and fixed it. If you could write that as an answer, I'd gladly accept it. Also, I'm adding thw `Wubi` tag to my question because I think this is a Windows/Wubi specific problem — TheRookierLearner, Apr 09 '14 at 04:27
Lots of files can fill up your inodes, check out the link - http://askubuntu.com/questions/231585/running-out-of-inodes — kingmilo, Apr 09 '14 at 04:43
@kingmilo - True. But the `df - i` commands outputs that only 29% of my inodes are in use (see 1st edit) — TheRookierLearner, Apr 09 '14 at 04:48
@TheRookierLearner kool, was just an fyi, it catches a lot of people out. — kingmilo, Apr 09 '14 at 06:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '14 at 04:35

When you cancel the copying of file there might appear a problem in the filesystem. So reboot into Windows and run

chkdsk /F <drive>

It should find and fix errors that can't be fixed inside Ubuntu.

^{Offtopic: I dream about such application that would scan disk in Ubuntu without need to boot Windows…}

Why does my filesystem appear to be full to Ubuntu?

1 Answers1