I am running debian 12 on a HP computer and a samsung monitor.ÿ I have
been getting messages about var getting smaller and smaller. I went on
line and found what seemed to be an easy job so I printed it out.ÿ Then
came the fun.ÿ It is called How to clear var space in Linux - Best
practices for freeing up disk space.ÿ from ITSMARTTRICKS.

The very first command df -Th /varÿ would not work with or with out the security password.ÿ I am at a loss.ÿ I have a sdd in the computer and a samsung 2 GB attached for all back ups I need.

Any help you can offer me would be greatly appreciated.

Maureen

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.10
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 22:21:10 -0500, Maureen L Thomas wrote:

fun.? It is called How to clear var space in Linux - Best practices for freeing up disk space.? from ITSMARTTRICKS.

I would be cautious following anything that sounds like it came from
a social media platform.

The very first command df -Th /var? would not work with or with out the security password.? I am at a loss.

This command does not require special privileges to execute.

hobbit:~$ df -Th /var
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p3 ext4 233G 211G 9.9G 96% /

Please COPY and PASTE your attempt to execute the command. Make
sure you include your shell prompt, the command you typed, and its
full output.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.10
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat 31 Jan 2026 at 23:08:39 (-0500), Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 22:21:10 -0500, Maureen L Thomas wrote:

fun.ÿ It is called How to clear var space in Linux - Best practices for freeing up disk space.ÿ from ITSMARTTRICKS.

I would be cautious following anything that sounds like it came from
a social media platform.

The very first command df -Th /varÿ would not work with or with out the security password.ÿ I am at a loss.

This command does not require special privileges to execute.

hobbit:~$ df -Th /var
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p3 ext4 233G 211G 9.9G 96% /

Please COPY and PASTE your attempt to execute the command. Make
sure you include your shell prompt, the command you typed, and its
full output.

To avoid confusion, it might just be worth mentioning that you, Greg,
don't have a separate partition for /var, and so df prints statistics
for the filesystem containing /var, which is / (quite full BTW!).

Cheers,
David.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.10
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 10:21:10PM -0500, Maureen L Thomas wrote:

I am running debian 12 on a HP computer and a samsung monitor.ÿ I have been getting messages about var getting smaller and smaller. I went on line and found what seemed to be an easy job so I printed it out.ÿ Then came the
fun.ÿ It is called How to clear var space in Linux - Best practices for freeing up disk space.ÿ from ITSMARTTRICKS.

I had a cursory look at the site you probably mention. As others said
here, just don't. It's full of it.
For starters, it assumes that you have /var on a separate partition.
These days, this is not necessarily the "normal" setup (although not
rare either).
Please: start with entering the command
df -h
and telling us exactly what its output is.
Cheers
--
tom s


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.10
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 1/31/26 19:21, Maureen L Thomas wrote:

I am running debian 12 on a HP computer and a samsung monitor.ÿ I have
been getting messages about var getting smaller and smaller. I went on
line and found what seemed to be an easy job so I printed it out.ÿ Then
came the fun.ÿ It is called How to clear var space in Linux - Best
practices for freeing up disk space.ÿ from ITSMARTTRICKS.

Is this the page you are referring to?

https://www.itsmarttricks.com/clear-var-space-in-linux/

The very first command df -Th /varÿ would not work with or with out the security password.ÿ I am at a loss.

Please post your console session. For example:

2026-02-01 09:04:52 dpchrist@laalaa ~
$ df -Th /var
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/sdb3_crypt ext4 12G 9.5G 1.8G 85% /

I have a sdd in the computer and a
samsung 2 GB attached for all back ups I need.

Any help you can offer me would be greatly appreciated.

Maureen

I update my machines monthly, or as needed. If everything works after restarting, I remove and clean unused packages. This frees disk space
on /var. Note that you will need a root shell, or sudo(8):

2026-01-24 20:19:02 root@laalaa ~
# apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

2026-01-24 20:20:18 root@laalaa ~
# apt-get autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Del thunderbird 1:140.6.0esr-1~deb11u1 [72.1 MB]
Del libgimp2.0 2.10.22-4+deb11u4 [3601 kB]
Del python3-urllib3 1.26.5-1~exp1+deb11u2 [115 kB]
Del firefox-esr 140.6.0esr-1~deb11u1 [76.5 MB]
Del gimp-data 2.10.22-4+deb11u4 [16.8 MB]
Del libsnmp40 5.9+dfsg-4+deb11u2 [2551 kB]
Del libsnmp-base 5.9+dfsg-4+deb11u2 [1736 kB]
Del gimp 2.10.22-4+deb11u4 [7182 kB]


I also trim the SSD. Be patient -- this takes several minutes:

2026-01-24 20:20:26 root@laalaa ~
# time fstrim -a -v
/scratch: 23.5 GiB (25227034624 bytes) trimmed on /dev/mapper/sdb4_crypt
/boot: 801.8 MiB (840699904 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sda1
/: 2.6 GiB (2778947584 bytes) trimmed on /dev/mapper/sdb3_crypt

real 3m11.999s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m1.612s


David

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.10
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)