Question

7

If I fill my harddrive, why can't I log in?

rated 0 times [ 7] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 752 / 2 Years ago, thu, april 7, 2022, 9:10:49

I was stupid, I kept ignoring the warnings that my harddrive space was running low and left a download running in the background. When I logged out, I wasn't taken back to the login screen (LightDM), and when I rebooted I didn't get the login screen either. Instead I got a terminal-like screen that listed drivers/daemons being loaded, but didn't have a prompt. I could still access the terminal with Ctrl-Alt-F1 (and F2 etc).

After barking up many wrong trees I solved it by deleting a file or two. My question is, why did this happen?

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learty

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answered 2 Years ago musining · Accepted Answer

If the root partition has filled (or the partition that holds /var to be more precise), there will not be any space to write to /var/log/auth.log, which usually prevents login attempts from anyone besides the superuser.

The same goes for /home. There are files in your home directory that have to be updated and if there is no space left on the device will prevent you from logging in.