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Why can the trash no longer be deleted in Linux?

The RRZE offers a free network drive as a home directory with a limited quota (employees 10GB, students 2GB). This means that at no time can you use more than the permitted storage space on the network drive.

To free up memory that may be in use, please try the following troubleshooting approaches first (see also https://www.anleitungen.rrze.fau.de/?p=8644#quota-exceeded).

Note: If a graphical login is no longer possible, you can switch to the text console with Ctrl+Alt+F3 and carry out the steps given below. After completing the work, exit the text console with exit and switch back to the graphical login with Alt+F2.

  1. Empty rubbish bin/trash
    Empty the trash can by right-clicking on the corresponding desktop icon or by typing
    rm -rI ~/.local/share/Trash
    Explanation:
    Deleted files are moved to the so-called recycle bin for easy recovery. The storage space is not freed until the recycle bin is emptied.
  2. Clear cache directory
    Delete the .cache directory in your home, eg by entering
    rm -rI ~/.cache
    Explanation:
    Various programs temporarily store files here in order to speed up recurring access (e.g. web browsers).
  3. Analyze memory usage and delete additional files if necessary
    Create an overview of memory usage and find the biggest memory hogs by entering
    du -sh ~/{.[!.]*,*} | sort -h
    Explanation:
    The command creates a list of all files and directories in your home and sorts them in ascending order of memory usage. This way you can find out what is using up the most memory and it might be worth cleaning up.
    A notice:
    On Linux, hidden files are marked with a dot at the beginning. To make them visible in your file manager, you can use the shortcut CTRL+H.

If these steps do not help you, please contact us again for a more detailed analysis of the problem.