Storage full on EMMC

Hello Everyone,

I have a custom application on my Beagle Bone and it works perfectly, but When we use the product for 2 days it working and now is not working.

I tried to connect the Beagle Bone through Putty and did some inspection of memory. Please find the below details for diagnostics

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            215M     0  215M   0% /dev
tmpfs            49M  5.3M   44M  11% /run
/dev/mmcblk1p1  3.5G  3.3G     0 100% /
tmpfs           242M     0  242M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           242M     0  242M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs            49M     0   49M   0% /run/user/1000

Then i checked log for bluetooth it says: “open(/home/debian/.cache/obexd/Patient.csv): No space left on device (28)
Oct 04 07:53:39 BeagleBone obexd[1272]: PUT(0x2), Internal Server Error(0x50)
Oct 04 07:53:39 BeagleBone obexd[1272]: DISCONNECT(0x1), (0xff)” .

Please Can someone guide me on this and give some suggestion or troubleshooting help?
Can we remove unwanted packages from OS. I am using Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) OS on my beaglebone.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

You need to delete some files to free up space.
If you’re unable to work on the device as it is, then flash an image onto an sdcard and boot from that. Then you can mount the emmc and browse it at your leisure to find files to delete.
You might find going forward that the emmc is not big enough for your application. In that case, you may be able to use a smaller system image (desktop image = big, iot image = smaller, minimal image = smallest) or you may need to run it from the sdcard.

Thank you for your early reply @bbbpaul.
Can we delete unwanted packages from the OS to free up the space? If able to delete, could you please share the process for it?

Thanks

Yes you can.
If the system is not usable now, you will first need to boot from the sdcard to find files to delete, as I described above. Then when you’ve free’d enough space to boot the system normally, you can then use apt to remove any unwanted packages.
Which image are you using now?

I am using Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) OS on my beaglebone.

The system is currently in use. i freed up upto 300 Mb space and bluetooth issue is solved. but its not a permenant solution.

Thanks

Is it the desktop image, iot or minimal?


I have downloaded from here. please refer it. I think it is IOT

Yes, it’s the iot image.
You might be able to free up enough space, there’s quite a bit in there that’s not in the minimal image.

ok, Thanks for the confirmation.
Could you please help me to free up the space of emmc? I am not aware about it.

Looking for your response!

You need to work out what packages you need installed based on what you are trying to do.

However you can probably free up a little space by deleting all of the files in /var/log
That might get you enough space to uninstall some things

Assuming you have space run

apt list --installed

That will give you a list of the installed packages.
Then apt remove packages you don’t need.

You might be better of starting with the minimal image and then start installing stuff you need to run your application.

yes i got it @benedict.hewson but i am confused about which packages will delete and which i keep?

Thanks

Nobody can answer that for you. What does your program do, what libraries does it need. What system services does it require. If you have packages installed that don’t provide anything you program needs, you can probably remove them. If you break the system, then you will either have to re-flash, or reinstall bits you removed.

run the apt list --installed and get a list of what is installed. It might be obvious what they do, or it might not. you can go here and input the package name to get some info

https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=search

or on the BBB

apt info -a package-name

I am not sure if the BBB caches downloaded files but you can also try

apt-get clean

That’s why it is easier to start with the minimal image and start installing packages that you need.

I cant help but feel that trying to remove unused packages might be the hard way of fixing this. I’d recommend that you consider either:
1 - start with the minimal image, if you think this will work, adding packages if required. You can try this out on an sdcard if you’re unsure.
or:
2 - if you think you really do need the iot image - flash this to an sd card and use that instead of the emmc.

Yes, i removed some packages and free up the EMMC, but i checked after some time it is getting full without any installation or use. Beaglebone is only in ON state.

Primerily it has 400MB then, now only 300MB left. How it filled …?
It can be fill due to running processes to backend? or any other reasons…?

most likely log files. what processes are running ? you can install iotop to see disk read/writes

Could you please share any link of minimal os?

Thanks

This page has info and links:
https://forum.beagleboard.org/t/debian-11-x-bullseye-monthly-snapshot-2023-10-07/31280

The minimal snapshot is about half way down the page.

Its a couple of months newer than the one you are using, but I think should be pretty much the same.