Post by @murdoc@autistics.life

2026-07-31 04:31 UTC

Ok, I think I'm getting in over my head on this computer problem, any help much appreciated! (Linux/Opensuse TW/KDE/btrfs) Symptom: Everything that tries to save something to my home partition (configurations, sessions, kwallet, etc.) says that I have no space left, and thus won't work. Some programs won't even load (Vivaldi, Steam). Every file manager I have tells me that I do have space left. History: Before this happened I had tried updating a game in Steam thinking that it would warn me if there wasn't enough room on the disk to do so (silly me). Then the whole desktop crashed and I had to restart. Tried: 1) deleting several GB of files. I can now download files to /home, but all the other stuff still won't work. 2) running fsck from bootable flash drive. Mostly didn't do anything. Finally got it to tell me to use btrfs check instead (I am using btrfs). 3) I did that and it told me that there were errors. The only things that looked like errors was in "Checking free space tree" where it said "Space key logical (number) length (number) has no corresponding block group" twice with different numbers. 4) Not being terribly familiar with btrfs yet, I read the fine manual for btrfs check. There were lots of warnings about not trying to repair a btrfs without experienced help, else risking your volumes. So here I am. #linux #opensuse #btrfs

Replies (7)

@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-07-31 04:36

@murdoc@autistics.life My only relevant experience here is that `btrfs check --repair` trashed my volume and I had to restore a backup. Recovering from structural corruption (without copying everything and reformatting) seems to be one of the weak points of this file system…

Open ##5071853
@simon_schwarz@mastodon.social 2026-07-31 04:50

@murdoc@autistics.life did you run btrfs df /home ? i suspect snapshots ;)

Open ##5071854
@bryanredeagle@beige.party 2026-07-31 04:57

@murdoc@autistics.life You can use `btrfs filesystem df /` to show more accurate disk usage. The last item is the path. I don't think the gui program, Btrfs Assistant, is on OpenSUSE, but you might want to check if it is. It'll have lots of information. Additionally, you could install Cockpit, which is a web-based gui for managing the computer. It has a storage module that shows lots of information, and even lets you manage it a bit

Open ##5071859
@dirkdierickx@mastodon-belgium.be 2026-07-31 05:42

@murdoc@autistics.life check if you still have enough available inodes on that filesystem. If not, you get the same symptoms as when you have no space left.

Open ##5071860
@mdione@en.osm.town 2026-07-31 06:03

@murdoc@autistics.life I'm not sure Mastodon ia the best medium to get help in this situation. Maybe try something closer to chat, like IRC. The TW community page surely has infonhow to het there.

Open ##5071865
@darkling@mstdn.social 2026-07-31 09:20

@murdoc@autistics.life The likelihood is that your FS has had all of its space allocated (to either data or metadata), and that there's lots of data allocation free, but not enough of the metadata allocation. tl;dr: btrfs balance start -dlimit=3 /mountpoint Longer thread from last time someone had this problem, explaining what's happened: https://mstdn.social/@darkling/116024038055392713

Open ##5071867
@frotz@grenzland.club 2026-07-31 12:32

@murdoc@autistics.life it sounds as if the free space tree or cache needs to be cleared. when booting from a flash drive, did you try mounting the volume with the "space_cache=v2,clear_cache" option and then rebooting?

Open ##5071875