[SOLVED] No X server or WM after video compression went wrong

Martin · 2021-09-06 08:31:02

OK guys, now I need your help.

Yesterday I reported success with my old 32-bit box and antiX.

While I was playing around there my main machine was running Ohohnot's video compression script. I have used it with success quite a number of times now and didn't expect anything strange to happen. It takes a while on my HW. Several hours usually. I left it to work on this task over night and all looked normal when I went to bed.

This morning I found the process had ground to a halt. RAM and SWAP full according to htop (which I had left running). The system is completely unresponsive. I decided to reboot.

What I get now is a 1920x1200 terminal. No X, no Openbox. Just a login prompt.

Logging in works fine. All looks 'normal' when traversing the file system with the help of ranger. Startx is another matter. I get this (transcribed):

xauth: unable to write authority file /tmp/serverauth.blablabla
xauth: unable to write authority file /tmp/serverauth.blablabla
(EE)
Fatal server error:
(EE) Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tX0-lock
.
.
.

Hmm, odd.

I use btrfs on my main box. Two HDDs: RAID for speed for / and RAID for redundancy for /home. Time to bring out some btrfs tools:

sudo btrfs filesystem df /  results in:
Data, RAID0: total=17.97GiB, used=17.97GiB
System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=16.00KiB
Metadata, RAID1: total=768.00MiB, used=387.95MiB
GlobalReserve, single= total=41.72MiB, used=0.00B

So the root partition is full. No wonder it is impossible to create things on /tmp. But it is very, very strange. There should be plenty of room there I think. Could btrfs be fooled or corrupt? I have used btrfs in this configuration for years with no issues.

Let's take a look at /home as well.

sudo btrfs filesystem df /home  results in:
Data, RAID1: total=251.00GiB, used=245.40GiB
System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=64.00KiB
Metadata, RAID1: total=2.00GiB, used=468.83MiB
GlobalReserve, single= total=294.67MiB, used=0.00B

Hmpf, not full but I think there should be more empty space on /home than this indicates.

How do I go from here? Any ideas? Where should I look for whatever filled up / ?

This will be for tonight as I have to work 'at the coal face' now.

/Martin (typing on his secondary bunsenlabs system)

Last edited by Martin (2021-09-08 19:45:35)

Martin · 2021-09-06 16:50:46

Short up-date.

Using

sudo du -hsx * | sort -rh | head -10

I have found that /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log all are between 2 and 2.2 GB which means /var/log is well in excess of 6 GB.

On the computer I type this on those three files are about 1000 times smaller.

Inspecting the offendingly large files I see they contain the same error messages in humongous quantities. All created late yesterday and all related to texlive, some font file or font not found. At that time I had opened some old (early 1990s) LaTeX files in Gummi and there was some issue with character coding of å, ä and ö.

Question, is it safe to delete /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log or will I break the system?

It seems my /home my actually be that full. Still surprised though.

/Martin

rbh · 2021-09-06 17:26:25

Martin wrote:

Question, is it safe to delete /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log or will I break the system?

It is safe. If it is possible, it migt be a good ide to save the logs somewhere else if you want to examine more errors.

17 GiB, is not much space... On workstations I use frekvent, I prefer at least 30 GiB for /...
I have sometimes been forsed to cleaning apt-cache to be able to login and do what was urgent and later clean more.

It seems my /home my actually be that full. Still surprised though.

BleachBit, https://www.bleachbit.org, is a good cleaning tool. Both for system and user files.

Martin · 2021-09-06 19:29:17

Thanks.

I use Bleachbit regularly both at home and at work.

I don't remember now how many years I have had this HW set-up but time flies and even BL SW swells...

In 2016 I finally got myself a Sony Action cam. I don't use it a lot and I don't use its full resolution but those video files are huge. I guess I have to consider shopping for more disk space.

First sail with said action cam strapped to starboard tiller:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHEyRoDmDWk

/Martin

Martin · 2021-09-08 19:59:12

Creating some space on / by moving /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log helped.

Everything is back to normal and has performed without hitches for two days now. I ran that video compression during the night between yesterday and today. No issues this time. It takes time but reduces the file size by 40% with no ill effects on image quality.

I think I misinterpreted the output of those btrfs commands in an earlier post. I now think I have 6+ GB 'head room' in / and ~160 GB free space in /home.

/Martin

#1 2021-09-06 08:31:02

[SOLVED] No X server or WM after video compression went wrong

#2 2021-09-06 16:50:46

Re: [SOLVED] No X server or WM after video compression went wrong

#3 2021-09-06 17:26:25

Re: [SOLVED] No X server or WM after video compression went wrong

#4 2021-09-06 19:29:17

Re: [SOLVED] No X server or WM after video compression went wrong

#5 2021-09-08 19:59:12

Re: [SOLVED] No X server or WM after video compression went wrong

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