disk full - but never stored anything

[molvol]

Hi,

Some time ago I installed Backtrack4 on a 5.5G partition (right there it drove me crazy the first time - how can a 1.5G archive that runs right off DVD increase its size almost four-fold when copied to hd???).

After booting back then I got a msg that there's only 4% diskspace left and if I want to launch Konqueror. This became 3% and now it's 0% and I had to delete some log files to even startx again.

The ONLY thing I ever did was run a few airmon-ng commands and view some html files in Firefox. Why and where did Linux fill up all remaining disk space and how do I get it back?
Can I delete some major package to free up 100MB or so? I only use the airmon-package.
And how can I make sure Linux doesn't fill up all remaining space again (that's worse than Windows!).

Thanks!

[Archangel-Amael]

Response/ comments in line:

Hi,
Some time ago I installed Backtrack4 on a 5.5G partition (right there it drove me crazy the first time - how can a 1.5G archive that runs right off DVD increase its size almost four-fold when copied to hd???).

Compression, google it.

The ONLY thing I ever did was run a few airmon-ng commands and view some html files in Firefox. Why and where did Linux fill up all remaining disk space and how do I get it back?

I don't know where it filled up, but apt-get install filelight to see where the space is. (also link there shows more info).

Can I delete some major package to free up 100MB or so? I only use the airmon-package.

Yes you can delete anything you want. But you may in turn mess something up.

And how can I make sure Linux doesn't fill up all remaining space again (that's worse than Windows!).
Thanks!

Send all output to /dev/null but that's probably not the best solution. A better solution to this entire issue would be to give BT more space.
Further let's be honest here, Windows in all of it's recent and or supported variants require a lot more space than 5, gigs so if you don't like BT feel free to use something else.

[voidnecron]

The ONLY thing I ever did was run a few airmon-ng commands and ...

Don't underestimate the logsize of wireless captures. With enough AP's and traffic these can get huge.
Check the dir where you keep these logs with ie

du -h /path/to/logfilesfolder/

[orgcandman]

To somewhat elaborate on Archangel-Amael's answer, your BT4 DVD contains a filesystem.squashfs which compresses the (roughly) 4-6 GB filesystem that BT4 uses, down to a manageable 1.5-2GB. When you extract it, it's therefore going to be bigger.

If you are insistent upon using only 5GB for your BT4 partition, you'll find that quickly you will not be able to do anything worthwhile. There's a partial solution to this - break up the 5GB partition into two smaller partitions, one 2.5 GB partition, and another 2.5 GB partition (numbers are rough). In the first partition, you can store the filesystem.squashfs, and initrd, and kernel. Then you can point grub to boot those. Name the second partition 'casper-rw' and you'll have a persistent store, of roughly 2gb.

NOTE: even 2gb of free space is a small amount depending on what you're planning on doing.

BEST approach is to give the system at least a 20gb partition, and more if you can spare. That way, you'll have plenty of free space to save logs, captures, and pentest reports.

[thorin]

As an alternative idea, if you don't know or can't figure out what the tools you're running are doing to your system or the system(s) you're running them against perhaps you shouldn't be playing with them and causing problems for yourself or the businesses and people that own the system(s) you're targeting.

[t4tm0h]

I would search your local craigslist for a cheap HD, you should be able to pick up at least a 40GB for $10 or less.

I was running BT3 off a 16gb USB, once I installed the virtual windows machine and the other stuff i wanted, it was pretty much full .I would go with a 20GB HD at the very least, you gotta have some breathing room just like with any other OS. Do the math on what you want installed, and plan ahead

[Eatme]

best thing (in my opinion) is to partition about 10GB of your windows OS space, and install backtrack on that partition. You will atleast have about 5GB more for free space, not including, you can also store/use Password Lists/Scripts/cap files/logs on your windows partition "through" backtrack.

just point anything you want to use or save "cd /media/disk" this will be your C:\
ex: aircrack-ng -w /media/disk/backtrack/passwords.txt /media/disk/backtrack/pentest/ssid.cap -e ssid

[Thorn]

As an alternative idea, if you don't know or can't figure out what the tools you're running are doing to your system or the system(s) you're running them against perhaps you shouldn't be playing with them and causing problems for yourself or the businesses and people that own the system(s) your targeting.

Classic, just classic.

[Archangel-Amael]

Classic, just classic.

...And the classic ideas are generally the best ones. I suppose that's how they get the term.

[molvol]

Thanks for the helpful answers. I thought it should be somehow possible to install it compressed - it seems that in such case a second partition is needed for storage. Is the compressed part read-only?

I expanded my ext3 partition by 600MB just to get the kde running again. The very weird thing is that the partition still shows up as 100% in use?

Surprisingly no grub adjustments were needed, but where did my additional 600MB go? (no, they are not unallocated). What the heck is going on?