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How much of my root space (19.5GB) should be used up in an installation?

ca flag

I have a root partition and a home partition, on a dual boot system (windows)

I currently have 4.9GB available in my Ubuntu Desktop 22.04.2 LTS system after limiting my journal/ folder (Big /var/log/journal? following the information from Robert Pollak) to 200MB and also clearing out my snapd/ folder from unnecessary snaps.

I'm not certain if only having 4.9 GBs left over is what is expected or whether I should try to find what else is taking up space.

If I run:

sudo du -hx --max-depth=1 / 2> /dev/null

I get the following:

173M    /boot
16K /lost+found
84K /snap
4.0K    /cdrom
4.9G    /var
4.0K    /mnt
968M    /opt
7.4G    /usr
1.5M    /root
16K /media
236K    /tmp
18M /etc
14G /

Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you in advance

guiverc avatar
cn flag
You've not provided any product/release specifics; but Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop & later systems (inc. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Desktop) have a recommended 25GB for the minimum disk allocation; some users (*myself included*) require more than that 25GB minimum, others can do with less (*don't add additional software, don't let upgrades accumulate etc*) but don't forget 25GB was only the recommended minimum. We all use our systems differently & should accommodate the extra software we'll install in the future, if we *release-upgrade* (this needs free space) or just re-install to upgrade etc.
guiverc avatar
cn flag
You've tagged your question as related to the *root* user? That directory (`/root/`) is not usually allocated its on directory, is usually on KB or at most MB in size, thus exists on the `/` file-system. Why did you tag *root* user? It's disabled by default on a Ubuntu system (*both desktop & server as you didn't specify which you're using*).
user3041883 avatar
ca flag
@guiverc sorry fro the late response, I wasn't getting email updates.
user3041883 avatar
ca flag
@guiverc (accidentally sent the above comment prematurely) What do you mean by "product/release specifics"? So based on your comment, having only 19.5 GB of space is a mistake on my part and should be increased to at least 25 GB. I'll investigate doing that. Could you also provide a link of where 25GB is the minimum root requirement? I can mark that as the solved answer. Ah, tagging as Root was, in hindsight, obviously incorrect. I meant to relate it to my root directory. I'll remove the root tag as well. I am using Ubuntu Desktop and not server. Thank you!
muru avatar
us flag
https://askubuntu.com/a/333796/158442 => https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop => "25 GB of free hard drive space"
us flag
If you install a lot of programs, and don't want to ever worry about disk space, reinstall Ubuntu with ~50 GB root partition.
guiverc avatar
cn flag
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements recommends 25GB for the minimum disk space for / for all releases of Ubuntu Desktop that used GNOME 3 (ie. 17.10 & later). Product & release would be Server|Desktop and release is the *year.month* detail such as 23.04 (2023-April release). Server systems have smaller minimums than Desktops, and for some products the release influences that too. Root directory is different to the `/root` directory don't forget (the latter being a user directory of the root user). 25GB is minimum; I'm one who adds software thus need 32GB+
user3041883 avatar
ca flag
@guiverc I tried to find the minimum Root partition storage requirements with no success, but it appears that the minimum storage requirements implicitly refers to Root. Is there a way for me to make your comment marked as the answer?
user535733 avatar
cn flag
As this is a common duplicate question, and is likely to soon be closed as such, do not worry about the answer. The answers will be on the duplicate.
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