Ever running out of disk space in your Ubuntu server or system, you can follow the below simple ways to free up space and clean your Ubuntu.
In thins guide you are going to learn how to clean up cache, old kernels, remove unused packages, journal logs.
Prerequisites
Access to server or system with root user or a user with sudo access.
Step 1: Remove APT Cache
Ubuntu keeps a cache of the installed packages which are downloaded or installed earlier even after uninstallation. You can see the cache files in this location /var/cache/apt
To check the disk space consumed you can use the following command.
sudo du -csh /var/cache/apt
Your will get an output that shows the space used by the cache folder.
Output
103M /var/cache/apt
103M total
Now you can clean this cache using the following command.
sudo apt-get clean
This command will clean up the entire cache which frees up more space.
If you wish to clean up only the outdated packages, you can use the following command.
sudo apt-get autoclean
Step 2: Clean Journal Logs
Each Linux disto has their own logging system to investigate what is going on in the system. You will have all logging data related to kernel or any other services.
Over time these logs consume more space. You can check the log size using the following command.
sudo journalctl --disk-usage
You can clear these logs which are older than certain days using the following command.
sudo journalctl --vacuum-time=2d
This command will delete all logs that are older than 2 days.
Step 3: Clean Up unused Packages
If you have packages that are not used you can use the following command to remove these packages.
sudo apt-get remove package_name
Step 4: Remove Old Kernels
You can remove the kernels that are no longer needed and that are installed from Ubuntu archive while system updates using the following command.
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge
This command will not remove the kernels that are installed manually.
Conclusion
Now you have learned how to clean up your Ubuntu server or system by cleaning the journal logs, cache, unused packages, old kernels.
Thanks for your time. If you face any problem or any feedback, please leave a comment below.
3 Comments
When I run “apt-get autoremove –purge”, it increases disk utilz by about 80M which is almost 5% of my disk. From du command, I don’t see any directories that have increased in size. How would you explain the increase in utilization?
@Kha – you have less than 2G hard drive?
I’m wondering if just running apt updated some other packages for you and that would be the increase.
If you’re using Docker you should also try a:
docker prune
Thanks a lot! I had free 3 Gb by using steps 1-3.