[SOLVED] Thunar deleted a file into a limbo, no space freed

kox · 2025-04-06 07:55:10

I had only the option to 'delete' a folder on an external hard drive. When I used that option (right click -> delete), the directory has been deleted, but no space has been freed.

It's nowhere. lost+found shows as empty. There was no .Trash-1000

I created .Trash-1000 manually and I can "move to trash" now rather than delete (the problem was Thunar did not have permissions to create the directory). However, Thunar has effectively shrunk the partition by 7GB by moving those files into an undiscoverable location.

- I tested that removing a file with rm works as expected, it's something specific to Thunar
- Space is not reclaimed after reboot

Last edited by kox (2025-04-06 09:03:50)

seth · 2025-04-06 08:19:21

For clarification, you're still "missing" that space?
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/ncdu/

What kind of FS is this?

Thunar has effectively shrunk the partition by 7GB by

lsblk -f
df -h
sudo du -hs /run/media/…

Also, what kind of filesystem is this?
Hardlinks and mountpoints can easily fool you here.

Also at least for trash support and a bunch of FS, thunar relies on https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/gvfs/

kox · 2025-04-06 08:35:00

Those commands show the same available space as thunar, 11GB. By shrunk the partition, I mean, those files do not exist yet they hold up that space. I deleted some files yesterday and something felt odd when I saw the available free space, but I did not pay attention to the free space prior to the delete. Today I did pay attention and removing 400MB of files, did not increase the available free space by nothing. I also used du and it does not show anything at the top level directory.

This is ext4 on luks.

seth · 2025-04-06 08:40:08

Please don't paraphrase, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855

did not increase the available free space by nothing

So it did increase it by something?

I also used du and it does not show anything at the top level directory.

So the filesystem is completely empty?

Please don't paraphrase, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855

And don't just look at random spots, the idea of usig ncdu was to track the storage usage down and the other three commands to either highlight pot. conflicting data or prove that there're still gonna be files somewhere.

You can also strace thunar to check what it does when you delete files this way.

kox · 2025-04-06 09:03:35

So the filesystem is completely empty?

I mean that the output of du shows the files and folders I would expect, at least up to depth of 3. I cannot share the output since those are private files.

df -f shows 619G (Size) 576G (Used) 11G (Available) This also matches the available space shown by ncdu, yet it does not look like there are any extra files.

I decided I will leave it, it's just some 3 - 6 GB, the most important thing is that it won't happen again after creating .Trash-1000. Thanks for your help and mentioning the ncdu program - best disk usage analyzer I have seen

Edit: I have just realized the Size minus Used is 43 GB. Is this normal that only 11GB show up as available?

Last edited by kox (2025-04-06 09:06:05)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-04-06 07:55:10

[SOLVED] Thunar deleted a file into a limbo, no space freed

#2 2025-04-06 08:19:21

Re: [SOLVED] Thunar deleted a file into a limbo, no space freed

#3 2025-04-06 08:35:00

Re: [SOLVED] Thunar deleted a file into a limbo, no space freed

#4 2025-04-06 08:40:08

Re: [SOLVED] Thunar deleted a file into a limbo, no space freed

#5 2025-04-06 09:03:35

Re: [SOLVED] Thunar deleted a file into a limbo, no space freed

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