Freeing up disk space on Arch Linux
Visualising what is using up disk space §
To visualise what is taking up disk space I use qdirstat:
$ sudo pacman -S qdirstat
$ qdirstat
Launching it opens a GUI which can be used to see what is hogging disk space.
The pacman cache is taking up a significant chunk.
Clearing up the pacman cache §
To free up space from the pacman cache, use the paccache package. It used to be included by default, but is now included in the pacman-contrib package:
$ sudo pacman -S pacman-contrib
Using the -r option will by default delete all but the last 3 most recent versions of previously cached packages:
$ sudo paccache -r
==> finished: 104 packages removed (disk space saved: 555.24 MiB)
Use k to specify how many most recent versions to keep, for example to keep only the most recently cached version:
$ sudo paccache -rk1
==> finished: 612 packages removed (disk space saved: 2.45 GiB)
Further, use the u option to target only uninstalled packages in the cache. For example, to delete all cached copies of all uninstalled packages:
$ paccache -ruk0
==> finished: 58 packages removed (disk space saved: 89.48 MiB)
You could use -rk0 to delete all cached copies of all uninstalled and installed packages, but this is advised against in case you want to downgrade or re-install without downloading. However it may be helpful if all other attempts to free up disk space have not been sufficient.
Clearing up orphaned packages §
$ pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qtdq)
Further commands for viewing disk usage §
To view which disks are present:
$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 119.2 GiB, 128035676160 bytes, 250069680 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 9F94F053-B3CD-4ADF-92A1-9272701DCB5B
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
/dev/sda2 1050624 42991615 41940992 20G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3 42991616 51380223 8388608 4G Linux swap
/dev/sda4 51380224 250068991 198688768 94.8G Linux filesystem
Disk /dev/loop0: 100 GiB, 107374182400 bytes, 209715200 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop1: 2 GiB, 2147483648 bytes, 4194304 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/mapper/docker-8:2-658581-pool: 100 GiB, 107374182400 bytes, 209715200 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 65536 bytes / 65536 bytes
To view what file systems are currently mounted:
$ findmnt
TARGET SOURCE FSTYPE OPTIONS
/ /dev/sda2 ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered
├─/proc proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime
│ └─/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc systemd-1 autofs rw,relatime,fd=27,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=12637
│ └─/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,relatime
├─/sys sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime
│ ├─/sys/firmware/efi/efivars efivarfs efivarfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime
│ ├─/sys/kernel/security securityfs securityfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime
│ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs tmpfs ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/unified cgroup2 cgroup2 rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/systemd cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,name=systemd
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/blkio cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/pids cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,pids
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/memory cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/rdma cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,rdma
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/freezer cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer
│ │ ├─/sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,hugetlb
│ │ └─/sys/fs/cgroup/devices cgroup cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices
│ ├─/sys/fs/pstore pstore pstore rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime
│ ├─/sys/fs/bpf bpf bpf rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700
│ ├─/sys/kernel/config configfs configfs rw,relatime
│ └─/sys/kernel/debug debugfs debugfs rw,relatime
├─/dev dev devtmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,size=4030284k,nr_inodes=1007571,mode=755
│ ├─/dev/shm tmpfs tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev
│ ├─/dev/pts devpts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000
│ ├─/dev/mqueue mqueue mqueue rw,relatime
│ └─/dev/hugepages hugetlbfs hugetlbfs rw,relatime,pagesize=2M
├─/run run tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755
│ └─/run/user/1000 tmpfs tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=807204k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000
├─/mnt/media systemd-1 autofs rw,relatime,fd=29,pgrp=1,timeout=60,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=12642
├─/tmp tmpfs tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev
├─/home /dev/sda4 ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered
└─/boot /dev/sda1 vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=
To view a (human readable) summary of disk usage:
$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
dev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
run 3.9G 840K 3.9G 1% /run
/dev/sda2 20G 15G 3.6G 81% /
tmpfs 3.9G 80M 3.8G 3% /dev/shm
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 3.9G 8.0M 3.9G 1% /tmp
/dev/sda4 94G 12G 77G 14% /home
/dev/sda1 511M 41M 471M 8% /boot
tmpfs 789M 8.0K 789M 1% /run/user/1000