Disk full after a run of BleachBit 4.6.0.3

Submitted by yacc22300 on Sun, 02/08/2026 - 13:51
Forums: 
Support
Forum tags: 
Linux

Hello,
I installed BleachBit from Linux Mint Cinnamon 22. The version installed is 4.6.0.3
I ran once in user mode, no problems except a lot of "Permission denied".
So I ran it a second time with sudo. And now, instead of having freed space, it filled all my disk (USB stick).
Gparted indicates indeed that the disk is full (39GB over 39GB) but the Disk Analyzer indicates that the root filesystem is only15.2GB! As all is installed under /, I should have about 24GB free.
So what is this mystery? Where are the lost GB?
Thank you for your help

BleachBit version: 
4.6.03
Your operating system: 
Linux Mint 22

andrew

Sun, 02/08/2026 - 14:06

Did BleachBit finish, or was the process possibly aborted before it finished? Please see Q: I closed BleachBit while it was working for a long time, and now my hard drive is full. How do I fix it?

tl;dr: It seems the "wipe free disk space" option was aborted, leaving a huge file which you can delete now.

BTW, your version of BleachBit is old, but Linux Mint Cinnamon 22 will never include a newer version. See install on Linux for more info. Version 5.0.2 is the latest, and I'm working on a beta release for version 6.0.0, so watch out for that soon. The new version (after 5.0.2) includes a friendly solution to your exact problem: when you start the application, it will detect the problem and offer to fix it.

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Andrew, lead developer

yacc22300

Mon, 02/09/2026 - 02:55

@andrew
Thank you for your answer.
Indeed, it is very likely that the PC's gone to sleep (I was away ).
Following the explanations given in the provided link, I've cleaned up the /root/.cache (I'd launched BeachBit with sudo) directory and the disk space came back to normal.
What surprises me is that the disk analyzer didn't see that. Is it because it was in a hidden directory?
Yes, I will follow your advice and load the last release.
Thanks again for your help

andrew

Mon, 02/09/2026 - 08:41

I'm glad you figured it out.

Running Baobab (Disk Analyzer) as a regular user won't show the contents of /root/ .

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Andrew, lead developer