RHEL - GDM could not write to authorization file

Question

I am getting an error as "GDM could not write to your authorization file" if I try to login as a non root user in my RHEL system. I restarted the machine hoping that the tmp files will be cleared and so I will not get this error on booting. However, I still get the error. I ran the df -h command and I got the below output.

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2              39G   39G     0 100% /
/dev/sda5             102G   33G   64G  34% /opt
/dev/sda1              99M   12M   83M  13% /boot
tmpfs                 1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /dev/shm

I read in this link that clearing log files should help. But logrotate should be doing it and even if I delete the log files I might encounter the same error in future. Is there any specific reason for this error? What should I try to increase the space on /dev/sda2 so that I can ensure non-root users can login to the machine?

Solution

Your system has run out of disk space. Notice this line:

/dev/sda2              39G   39G     0 100% /

You likely have a large file (probably a log file) that is full of error messages that went unchecked and has consumed all your disk space.

Check your /home/user directories for this file, .xsession-errors, and see if one of them isn't consuming all your free space.

I would use one of the answers from this question, titled: Sorting files according to size recursively, that shows you the top 10 largest files on your system:

$ du -ah /home | grep -v "/$" | sort -h | tail -6

Change it based on your own needs.

Example

$ du -ah /home/saml/tst | grep -v "/$" | sort -h | tail -6
14M /home/saml/tst/util-linux-2.19/po
43M /home/saml/tst/89704
43M /home/saml/tst/89704/dirA
43M /home/saml/tst/89704/dirA/file1.txt
48M /home/saml/tst/util-linux-2.19
96M /home/saml/tst

Comments

[Ramesh]

Thanks @slm. I was having lots of image files that were occupying the disk space. I cleared them. However, I will try running these commands to find out what actually consumes that much memory.