Something's filling up the partition

[randomAccess]

This is the problem I had faced for more that one time. I usually have 3 Linux partitions (/, /home and swap). After using Linux as a normal user (downloading, installing, etc.) for a couple of weeks or less, sometimes after reboot I cannot login to KDE. I can boot to the GUI login screen, but I cannot login. It seems that something has filled the partition (do not know which one), and KDE does not have enough space to start up. What could be the reason for this?

I tried to solve this by formatting /home, but it did not help me. All I could do was to reinstall Linux.

Should I in the future make another partition? Which one? /var maybe?

p.s.when I said downloading, I am absolutely sure that I didn't filled up the partition myself

[Roxoff]

/var is where all the temporary files get stored, so it's a good place to look if you want clean out stuff to make things work. If you keep it separate to the / partition, then if it gets full, it doesn't stop the system from working, it also has other benefits, like making sure you're not writing to the / partition frequently during a session, and is the first step in making the / partition mountable as read-only.

[bigtomrodney]

Make sure /tmp isn't full of rubbish. If you can, empty this in single user mode (init 1). You can zip up the logs in /var the same way, though I would not recommend fully deleting them without backing up first. Also try this in single user mode as /var/run and /var/lock contain lock file information and could be messy if done at a graphical level.

What distro are you using? Most distros look after this stuff automagically. If you are using a system that has package management, form which you install over a network/from the net you may want to ensure that you have not got a buildup of rpms/debs somewhere.

[randomAccess]

What distro are you using? .

At that time it was Mandriva, but now I'm in PCLinuxOS.