Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

Dave Cohen · 2008-10-08 17:37:29

When I got to my computer this morning it's root partition was full. That partition is over 400G and when I left the computer last night it was nowhere even close to full.

I spent a moment trying to find the files that filled the disk. I tried `du / | sort -n` This tells me the space is taken up by /home/dave. However, there are no files in that directory that would account for all that space. (du reports the directory is ~400G, but reports no files that would account for the space)

Then I rebooted the machine. Then suddenly my space was available again.

What's going on? I'm puzzled and confused.

I should mention that the root partition is EXT3 on top of LVM on top of RAID1, as described http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … AID_or_LVM. Is there a bug in this?

-Dave

[dave@starbuck ~]$ uname -a
Linux starbuck 2.6.26-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Sep 9 09:56:28 UTC 2008 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

[dave@starbuck ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/grande-root
                      422G   12G  390G   3% /
none                 1006M     0 1006M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/venti-media
                      447G   22G  403G   6% /mnt/media
/dev/md1               92M   17M   70M  20% /boot

(the `df -h` above is after reboot. Sorry I don't have a copy of the before reboot, but it showed 400G used on /)

dav7 · 2008-10-08 18:11:27

I can't recall the exact details, but I remember some disk usage going crazy on one of my own machines. 'du' was reporting more than 'ncdu' (an excellent package in the AUR that combines du and ncurses) or whatever similar tool I was using to see if du's craziness was correct (which it wasn't, of course).

I don't exactly remember what I did to fix it, but I think I rebooted and everything fixed itself.

I'm really venturing out here since my memory of this is so vague, but I might have had a (supposedly) full partition too, but I can't remember that part all that much.

And I run JFS without anything fancy (like RAID or LVM), so there are filesystem-independent issuez somewhere...

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-08 18:13:39)

Profjim · 2008-10-08 19:39:12

Some cache that was flushed when rebooting? Firefox? One of your mail programs? Your feedreader?

Factory · 2008-10-09 17:57:02

If I'm not mistaken, it sounds like your /tmp may have been the problem (if there was one to begin with). Perhaps something was filling this directory up for whatever reason.

Dave Cohen · 2008-10-09 19:37:38

I'm just waiting for this to happen again so I can track it down further. The computer has been running since without problems.

I don't think it was /tmp or a cache file, because du would have identified that. du claimed that /home/dave was taking up all the space, but there was no particular file within /home/dave that was taking up the space.

ashyanbhog · 2008-10-10 05:43:58

.xsession-errors in home directory maybe. Not sure if the file gets wiped out between reboots though.

robertp · 2008-10-12 14:05:30

I don't know exact details but this situation seems quite normal for me. It often happens when someone deletes the file (usually large) from filesystem while the file is still open by some application. Because the file is needed by the application it stays on disc (taking some disc space) but is no longer available for anyone. The file is finally deleted when application quits (for example when you restart computer). In such situation disc usage reported by du is totally different from disc usage reported by df.

That is the reason why you can delete open file on Linux but can't do this on Windows.

robertp · 2008-10-12 14:16:34

ashyanbhog wrote:

.xsession-errors in home directory maybe. Not sure if the file gets wiped out between reboots though.

du command (the way he use it) would report hidden file.

fukawi2 · 2008-10-12 22:12:48

Have a look at this post and try that if it happens again:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … ost2758445

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-08 17:37:29

Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#2 2008-10-08 18:11:27

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#3 2008-10-08 19:39:12

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#4 2008-10-09 17:57:02

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#5 2008-10-09 19:37:38

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#6 2008-10-10 05:43:58

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#7 2008-10-12 14:05:30

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#8 2008-10-12 14:16:34

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

#9 2008-10-12 22:12:48

Re: Disk is full, but I can't find the file(s) that fill it.

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