Once you shut down the system there were no processes remaining to keep a file open. So any file that had been deleted but kept allocated by an open process would have been de-allocated when you shutdown the system. That's why lsof didn't show anything.
The 5% free space you reclaimed using tunefs should have been usable by any process running as root. I'm not clear on what you were seeing when the system wouldn't boot. Usually when you start X windows for a graphical console, you are usually sent to a virtual console (usually number 7 IIRC). Was the "moving cursor" you described a mouse cursor?
It's possible that your system booted just fine but couldn't bring X up. IIRC parts of X (like xdm) do not run as root would not be able to get the required disk space. Did you try changing to an alternate virtual console and log in as the root user?
If I understand what you were seeing, logging in on a virtual console as root should have worked. Then you could have looked for files to clean up. With all your processing you may have filled up /tmp or /var/tmp with files. You could have deleted these files freeing enough disk space to get a graphic console back so you could run beachblit again.
Was the "moving cursor" you described a mouse cursor?
Yes, it appeared that I had a mouse cursor after the ubuntu splash screen appeared. I was tired going through it, so I just recorded a couple facts and came back to it later.
Did you try changing to an alternate virtual console and log in as the root user?
No. I did not know how. How would I do that?
I wrote it off being able to solve it as a root user. So I looked to solve the problem by booting into Manjaro on the pen drive.
What you're saying sounds plausible. Thanks for the input.
Once you shut down the system there were no processes remaining to keep a file open. So any file that had been deleted but kept allocated by an open process would have been de-allocated when you shutdown the system. That's why lsof didn't show anything.
The 5% free space you reclaimed using tunefs should have been usable by any process running as root. I'm not clear on what you were seeing when the system wouldn't boot. Usually when you start X windows for a graphical console, you are usually sent to a virtual console (usually number 7 IIRC). Was the "moving cursor" you described a mouse cursor?
It's possible that your system booted just fine but couldn't bring X up. IIRC parts of X (like xdm) do not run as root would not be able to get the required disk space. Did you try changing to an alternate virtual console and log in as the root user?
If I understand what you were seeing, logging in on a virtual console as root should have worked. Then you could have looked for files to clean up. With all your processing you may have filled up /tmp or /var/tmp with files. You could have deleted these files freeing enough disk space to get a graphic console back so you could run beachblit again.
Hi John,
To answer your questions.
Yes, it appeared that I had a mouse cursor after the ubuntu splash screen appeared. I was tired going through it, so I just recorded a couple facts and came back to it later.
No. I did not know how. How would I do that?
I wrote it off being able to solve it as a root user. So I looked to solve the problem by booting into Manjaro on the pen drive.
What you're saying sounds plausible. Thanks for the input.
hold alt and control keys down and press f1. That should move you to the first virtual
console which is also where the boot output is redirected.
See: makeuseof.com/what-are-linux-virtu...
Also I don't remember if root is enabled for local login. If not you could boot single user mode:
askubuntu.com/questions/132965/how...
Good to know! Thanks for sharing 🙂