System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration

File System Fills Up Because a Large File or Directory Was Created

Reason Error Occurred 

How to Fix the Problem 

Someone accidentally copied a file or directory to the wrong location. This also happens when an application crashes and writes a large core file into the file system.

Log in as superuser or assume an equivalent role and use the ls -tl command in the specific file system to identify which large file is newly created and remove it. For information on removing core files, see How to Find and Delete core Files.