Looking at this, I think a lot of the confusion comes down to having so many directories mounted to /media.
Does that mean I am real close to a crash and burn. What should I do?
Ummm I gotta say... I have no idea what is going on with all of your media mounts there.
Even your Zorin Partition shows it as Mounted at /media...
You also have 275gigs or so of free space sitting unused.
Your root directory shows that it is less than half filled. So it is not really in danger... But Root directory is where Media Mounts and since /media adds up the way it does, it makes the system think your / dir is overflowing, even if it isn't.
What is partition3? It is only 40gigs.
And your Swap partition is rather large... If using Hibernate, you need a swap partition, but it never needs to be more than double your physical RAM.
You've mounted your root partition to /media, therefore it can not access the available space on your root partition you have made. You need to mount your root to it's actual partition you created.
Your root partition should have been mounted to root, I'm not understanding why you have so many partitions mounted to your /media nor why when initially installed your root partition was changed to media.
Where you mount your partition is the drive in which it will write, regardless of how much space you gave the initial partition.
You should have made 3 partitions if using swap. Swap, Home, Root... that's it. The system would have asked you if you didn't already have one for the boot. Like @Aravisian pointed out as well, your swap is entirely large.
I can see creating the additional partition for backups, but I don't understand the point of creating a new partition for each folder than dumping them all into the same media partition. All your folders should have been dumped into your /home partition. If you're going to create a backup partition it can't be mounted to the same mount point has everything else. If you bork your system, then your backup will be inaccessible because you mounted it to the system itself.
My home partition that I created is mounted to home, swap to swap, root to root. They only write to the partitions that they are mounted on. If there is ever an issue with my system, I can easily reinstall and be back in the time it takes for the distro to actually install. with all my files right there. I only have to select my theme and icons, then I'm done. You wouldn't be able to do such with your current configuration.
What is the purpose of all those free space partitions?
Your first step should be cleaning up your partitions and mounting them correctly. Your next problem will be determining how many root files were written to the wrong directory and now you may have to repair or reinstall your system. Then you'll have to remove the root files that were written to the wrong partition.
How this got this way I don't know. In the beginning I had a dual boot in MS Windows. Then I stumbled into Zorin it being the 4th or 5th try with Linux. I had Zorin on a USB drive while trying it out. At some point I removed Windows 7 was still on hard drives. Finally SSD price started coming down and they were small if you recall. Also in this mess we lost some WDC and replaced with SSD as price came down and size increased until you see what I have now.
Some period of time I bought Zorin 16 PRO and set it up with 3 partitions as @Aravisian said on Gnome. Next installed the xfce and it worked much better. So you take the above scenario and me pushing 85 that knows nothing about Linux or just enough to be dangerous and have forgot a lot about MS Windows you end up with what you see. I don't have a clue about the free space unless it is results of removing old programs.
I understand what my first step should be but don't have a clue how to get started anymore. So if you guys will hold my hand with simple detail procedures I can still follow instructions. I thank you guys very much for all the help.
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Well first question is: How would you feel about reinstalling Zorin OS and setting everything up logically (With your personal files backed up)?
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Yes! I have spent most of today and yesterday trying to get my head around this problem and now have a bunch of questions to get answered.
First, my computer I built it and have Drive 0, Drive 1, Drive 2, and Drive 3 at the moment is not installed, its a SSD 250 GB. Drives 1 & 2 are HHD others are SSD.
Drive 0 Basic, GPT 250 GB NTFS Windows 10 111GB free space. So C:, E:, F:, G:, H: are all used with Windows 10.
The rest of the space on Drive 0 is for Zorin 16 Pro following instructions for Dual Booting with Windows 10. Next started having problems with Canon printer MB2720 and Gnome and I followed your instructions installing XFCE and everything was OK again.
I don't know why /media is involved, I don't remember anything dealing with /media. Don't remember anything about the Why on free space unless if more space was needed in Windows10 I had some. On partition 3 it say's it is Partition Type Microsoft Windows Recovery Environment.
2nd Question If after installing Zorin 16 Pro gnome and then installing Lite how many Ext4 and / should I have? Why is partition 1 so small, what is EFI system? Partition 2 Basic Data Windows 10 and not mounted. Partition 3 is Microsoft Windows Recovery Environment and Not Mounted, what is this for? Partition 4 is Microsoft Windows Recovery Environment andSwap (version 1) -- Active? Partition 5 is Basic Data Ext4 (version 1) --- Not Mounted? Partition 6 type is Linux Filesystem Ext4 (Version 1)--- Mounted at Filesystem Root. @DeanG Did he know about Dual Booting I would think some of this had to do with dual boot.
Can you show me a Tree layout how it should have been installed.
Hope this will help.
Your copy of Zorin OS Pro includes Zorin OS Pro Lite. So, if you performa reinstallation of the O.S., you may want to skip a step and just install Pro Lite.
This is the Bootloader partition - So please leave it UnChanged.
This is a partition created by default by the supplier. It contains a backup copy of Windows OS for recovery of the OS. It's like a Rescuezilla of Windows.
Your copy of Zorin OS Pro includes Zorin OS Pro Lite. So, if you performa reinstallation of the O.S., you may want to skip a step and just install Pro Lite.
I don't understand what you mean or what this will do. Do you mean just reinstallation of Zorin 16 Lite? Can this be done without messing with Window 10?
OR
Give Windows 10 a early retirement. I only used it to install Windows 10 updates.
Then Clone Zorin to Drive 3 SSD 250 GB after Temporary installing Zorin Lite. Have got to be able to run business so not under any rush or Drive 0 is taking longer than thought.
Next Clean Drive 0 and as you say "reinstalling Zorin OS and setting everything up logically (With your personal files backed up)?" Drive 0 would have 1 TB to set it up however you like.
Take Drive I (2 TB HHD use for Backup) clean it up and use for Zorin Backup.
Here is what I got.
/etc/fstab: static file system information.
Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
/ was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=a87bccd1-0337-40d0-be7d-6e585356b85a / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=08FF-362A /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
swap was on /dev/sda4 during installation
UUID=0a5a1f70-ee34-4562-abac-39a29907144f none swap sw 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Samsung_Flash_Drive_0305521040011184-0:0 /mnt/usb-Samsung_Flash_Drive_0305521040011184-0:0 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
I pasted the results of "sudo gedit /etc/fstab" would you look at it see if it is OK to proceed to next step. Is the Top you refer to at #9 if so what does this mean "errors=remount -ro 0 1"
You say: (Take note of the uuid, and compare to the disks partition in disks.) Does this mean to open "DISKS app and compare partition 6 to the results from fstab?" If so they are the same. Contents: Ext4 ver1.0 ----- Mounted at Filesystem Root
How do I place a label?
Question may seem dumb I am making sure we are on same page.
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Zorin 16 Lite is OK and what I use, uses Partition 1, 4, and 6. Zorin 16 Gnome uses Partition 1, 3, 4, and 5.
I moved all of the Free Space except for 15 GB into Partition 6. This 15 GB free space is left of Partition 3 Size 40 GB and is the Partition that is Low Space and is used by Zorin 16 Gnome. 40 GB Swap Partition is on the right of Partition 3.
How can I either move the 15 GB of free space into Partition 3 or take 10 GB from 40 GB Swap Partition to Partition 3. Or do I need the Swap file?
I do not find a label field that is blank.
My boot menu has Zorin 16.1 how did that get updated?
I notice Zorin 16.2 is out and I downloaded it. Can these be installed without loosing and personal data?
I have a 40 GB swap file Partition 4. I do not Hibernate so can I do away with this partition and move the space to Partition 3 where the space is needed?
I need to make a Backup of the system. Where is the app or how do I make a Backup?
For DejaDup, just type backups in your app menu.
Or if using Timeshift or rescuezilla, follow the normal steps you take when using those (since you would have had to install and configure them).
I use neither... I just compress my home folder and save it on another disk.
Understand all except "clear the mount at boot" How do I do this?
If you remove a partition that is included in the file system table (fstab), you must clear it out of fstab in order to avoid it remounting that partition at boot or throwing errors if you have changed that partition or removed it.
You can access and remove the UUID line of the Swap Parttion in fstab with
sudo nano /etc/fstab
How do you compress your Home folder?
There are many ways...
Terminal:
sudo tar -cvpJf backuphome.tar.xz /home/$USER
Or, you can use your file manager by elevating, then navigating from root to /home. Then right click your UserName Folder and choose "Compress"
I personally only back up individual directories and files that I know to keep.
So, I do not compress all of /home/$USER. I just launch the file manager, and right click the individual directories and files that I wish to keep.
Be advised: Compression can take a while.
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