"Low Disk Space on Filesystem root" after installing Axolotl and Podcasts

[Anna]

Hi,

please forgive me for making my entry to this forum with this very basic question (after owning the Pinephone (16 GB) for about two weeks and reading the threads here I have come to realise that I am probably way out of my depth).

My problem is as described above: After installing Axolotl and Gnome Podcasts, I get the following error message: "Low Disk Space on 'Filesystem root' The volume 'Filesystem root' has only 716,3 MB disk space remaining." That figure keeps changing and went down to a two digit number. At that point, Axolotl did not start anymore. I deleted everything I could (well, basically all my files) to come to the present 716 MB (Axolotl works again).

I tried to reproduce the problem on Megi's multi distro SD card. After upgrading Mobian, according to "Usage"/Storage", the "Operating System" took exactly 10 GB, "Home" 9 MB and the other directories 0 KB. After installing Gnome Podcasts, "Operating System" went down to 7,7 GB and Home up to 4,1 GB -- almost entirely due to a directory /.local/share/flatpak of a similar size. Uninstalling Podcasts did not change much about that.

On my main Mobian installation (not the SD card), "Operating System" now takes 7,6 GB, Home 5,8 GB and 1,5 GB are supposedly available (so considerably more than the 716 MB in the error message, according to "Usage"). In Home 4 GB are taken by /.local/share/flatpak, 908 MB by /go. Documents (146 KB), Downloads (63 KB) Pictures (42 MB) and other directories take relatively little space.

So my Pinephone has pretty much become unusable: I cannot save files for lack of space and even if I don't, the "Disk Space on Filesystem root" still tends to shrink for reasons I do not understand.


Any ideas what I can do?

Best,
Anna

[dukla2000]

Hi,

please forgive me for making my entry to this forum with this very basic question (after owning the Pinephone (16 GB) for about two weeks and reading the threads here I have come to realise that I am probably way out of my depth).
...

Welcome. Do not worry about being out of your depth - most of us are! As long as you are ready to learn to swim all is fine!

...
My problem is as described above: After installing Axolotl and Gnome Podcasts, I get the following error message: "Low Disk Space on 'Filesystem root' The volume 'Filesystem root' has only 716,3 MB disk space remaining." That figure keeps changing and went down to a two digit number. At that point, Axolotl did not start anymore. I deleted everything I could (well, basically all my files) to come to the present 716 MB (Axolotl works again).
.....

OK - so your filesystem on your 16Gb eMMC has mostly filled up. Of course can happen but really shouldn't after just basic usage. As a comparison my 32Gb eMMC with Mobian, Axolotl and a few other bits has 19Gb free - in comparison I would expect you to have 3Gb free.

You seem to be swimming reasonably to see what is taking space: my guess is the flatpak Axolotl installation is more expensive than the way I do it (the . basic commands towards the bottom of the page). Have to rush right now, will be back later, hopefully someone else can help more in the mean time.

[vongillus]

Hi,

from my side the basic Mobian install takes around 5.7GB on / but I have only installed Anbox as additional application.

In my local flatpak directory I have only a few KB.

Googling around about flatpak, you could try to list what is installed with it with the following command (from a terminal King's Cross):

Code:

flatpak list -d --app --runtime

Or the following command which should clean unused flatpaks:

Code:

flatpak uninstall --unused

Good luck! 

[Anna]

Code:

flatpak uninstall --unused

Good luck! 

Dear dukla2000, dear vongillus,

thank you so much for your help!

The "flatpak uninstall --unused" command indeed did the trick for the time being -- the available disk space went up from 1.5 GB to 2.4 GB. ("Operating System" grew from 7.5 GB to 8.6 GB, while "Home" shrunk from 5.8 GB to 4 GB -- whatever the reasons may be). The "Low Disk Space" message has disappeared.

I'm happy!

Best,
Anna

[pagesix1536]

Also... I don't think the basic Gnome Podcasts app purges old episodes. At least in my experience I've not see any options for this in the program (sucks...this is a BASIC FEATURE of any podcast app that should be there). I was planning to write my own shell script sometime in the near future to deal with this... but of course cron isn't installed on Mobian by default, so I have to get that on there first.

Always something with this stuff. Nothing is ever good-to-go.

[dukla2000]

...

The "flatpak uninstall --unused" command indeed did the trick for the time being -- the available disk space went up from 1.5 GB to 2.4 GB. ("Operating System" grew from 7.5 GB to 8.6 GB, while "Home" shrunk from 5.8 GB to 4 GB -- whatever the reasons may be). The "Low Disk Space" message has disappeared.

I'm happy!

Best,
Anna

Glad you are sorted for now. In fact just today someone on the Axolotl Telegram group has created a package that can be installed directly into Mobian (join the Telegram group linked in the Axolotl display, have a look a post from e m at 15:12 (GMT) today). It saves me 1Gb of my eMMC.

In the longer run it is perfectly possible to use an SDcard to supplement your storage, say for all your photos and music, so your eMMC size does not have to be a bottleneck.

I use liferea for my podcasts (I like it as also use it for my RSS news feeds). As far as I can tell it hasn't yet bloated in my filesystem - it does have a default storage of 100 episodes/entries blah blah.

[pajux]

I tried to reproduce the problem on Megi's multi distro SD card. After upgrading Mobian, according to "Usage"/Storage", the "Operating System" took exactly 10 GB, "Home" 9 MB and the other directories 0 KB. After installing Gnome Podcasts, "Operating System" went down to 7,7 GB and Home up to 4,1 GB -- almost entirely due to a directory /.local/share/flatpak of a similar size. Uninstalling Podcasts did not change much about that.

Flatpak applications usually depend on a runtime (e.g. a specific Gnome version). When installing an application, it will also install that runtime if not already present, and very often that runtime is much larger than the application, since it includes all the libs and frameworks associated with, for example, Gnome or KDE.  This is why often people complain that flatpak applications are huge, because the Software application will say the application is 20MB and required 1GB of downloads.. That's because that download includes the runtime.

The idea is that multiple applications can share the same core, saving space (as opposed to AppImages, where each application image will include everything, thus using up a lot of space - if I remember correctly).  Of course in practice you end up with multiple versions of the same runtimes because different applications will require different versions...

Uninstalling the flatpak application will not uninstall that runtime, it will remain on your system untill you explicitly uninstall it as well.  This is why free space did not change much after uninstalling Podcasts.

[Anna]

Thank you guys!

Yeah, Podcasts really could do with some improvements -- being able to delete episodes would be a good start :-).

The package from the Telegram post worked perfectly: It did indeed increase my disk space from 2.4 to 3.3 GB. (arno_nuehm posted this link with additional information in the Axolotl thread: https://github.com/nuehm-arno/axolotl-mobian-package )

Flatpak sounds like a bad choice for my 16 GB telefonito then. Is there any method of getting rid of all that flatpak stuff altogether?

Best, Anna

[pajux]

Thank you guys!

Yeah, Podcasts really could do with some improvements -- being able to delete episodes would be a good start :-).

The package from the Telegram post worked perfectly: It did indeed increase my disk space from 2.4 to 3.3 GB.  (arno_nuehm posted this link with additional information in the Axolotl thread: https://github.com/nuehm-arno/axolotl-mobian-package )

Flatpak sounds like a bad choice for my 16 GB telefonito then. Is there any method of getting rid of all that flatpak stuff altogether?

Best, Anna

Aside from completely removing flatpak.. I think unused runtimes/packages can be uninstalled using the command:

flatpak uninstall --unused

[Anna]

Thank you! @vongillus had mentioned that command above and it did work wonders indeed. Is there any way to completely remove flatpak? What does one have to do?

Additionally I had tried to follow @dukla2000's suggestion to supplement the storage with an SD card but whenever I put one (an older and a very new & fast model, both 64 GB, both Samsung) the phone does not boot (green LED, black screen & nothing else), no matter whether I format them as ext4, fat or exfat. (I had used both of them for Megi's multi distro image before reformatting them.) What could be the problem?