Disk unaccountably filled

[lcoe]

Neil Moore <neil@cfconline.co.uk> wrote:

> I am working though the Linux From Scratch (4.1) tutorial without any
> problems until after I had changed the root to the new partition (at
> Part III) and mounted "proc" filesystem.

> At this point the disk seems to have completely filled with files that
> I can't account for. The disk is 1 Gb approx. formatted as Ext2.
> Nautilus says the following about its contents - "16139 items,
> totalling 307.6 MB (some contents unreadable)" and the "df" command
> says:

> Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda3 2063536 1722632 236080 88% /

^ ^^^
i read the size as 2gig for just hda3, am i missing something?

> /dev/hda2 101107 9324 86562 10% /boot
> /dev/hda5 1494204 1494204 0 100% /mnt/lfs
> none 127632 0 127632 0% /dev/shm

> At this point I can't move any more files onto the partition. I have
> previously had much more data on this disk however I deleted this to
> see if that would help, but it didn't, so this doesn't seem to be a
> physical defect.

if you haven't, run fsck. then man du, i suggest du -ak > /tmp/du.out.
this should tell you what is taking up space, you can sort the output
on size, too. good luck, --Loren

> Could someone please tell me what to do next. Thanks. Neil

[Ken Kauffman]

"lcoe" <lcoe@c1932201-a.attbi.com> wrote in message
news:TQXMa.3964$Ix2.1168@rwcrnsc54...

> Neil Moore <neil@cfconline.co.uk> wrote:

> > I am working though the Linux From Scratch (4.1) tutorial without any
> > problems until after I had changed the root to the new partition (at
> > Part III) and mounted "proc" filesystem.

>

> > At this point the disk seems to have completely filled with files that
> > I can't account for. The disk is 1 Gb approx. formatted as Ext2.
> > Nautilus says the following about its contents - "16139 items,
> > totalling 307.6 MB (some contents unreadable)" and the "df" command
> > says:

>

> > Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> > /dev/hda3 2063536 1722632 236080 88% /

> ^ ^^^
> i read the size as 2gig for just hda3, am i missing something?
>

> > /dev/hda2 101107 9324 86562 10% /boot
> > /dev/hda5 1494204 1494204 0 100% /mnt/lfs
> > none 127632 0 127632 0% /dev/shm

>
>
>

> > At this point I can't move any more files onto the partition. I have
> > previously had much more data on this disk however I deleted this to
> > see if that would help, but it didn't, so this doesn't seem to be a
> > physical defect.

>
> if you haven't, run fsck. then man du, i suggest du -ak > /tmp/du.out.
> this should tell you what is taking up space, you can sort the output
> on size, too. good luck, --Loren
>
>

> > Could someone please tell me what to do next. Thanks. Neil

to expand including sorting. this also works great for indexing an FTP
server.

du -ah | sort -k 2d > /tmp/du.out

ken k

[Neil Moore]

"lcoe" <lcoe@c1932201-a.attbi.com> wrote in message
news:TQXMa.3964$Ix2.1168@rwcrnsc54...

> Neil Moore <neil@cfconline.co.uk> wrote:

> > I am working though the Linux From Scratch (4.1) tutorial without any
> > problems until after I had changed the root to the new partition (at
> > Part III) and mounted "proc" filesystem.

>

> > At this point the disk seems to have completely filled with files that
> > I can't account for. The disk is 1 Gb approx. formatted as Ext2.
> > Nautilus says the following about its contents - "16139 items,
> > totalling 307.6 MB (some contents unreadable)" and the "df" command
> > says:

>

> > Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> > /dev/hda3 2063536 1722632 236080 88% /

> ^ ^^^
> i read the size as 2gig for just hda3, am i missing something?

Sorry, I meant that the *partition* is 1 Gig, that partition being
/dev/hda5. Apologies.

>

> > /dev/hda2 101107 9324 86562 10% /boot
> > /dev/hda5 1494204 1494204 0 100% /mnt/lfs
> > none 127632 0 127632 0% /dev/shm

>
>
>

> > At this point I can't move any more files onto the partition. I have
> > previously had much more data on this disk however I deleted this to
> > see if that would help, but it didn't, so this doesn't seem to be a
> > physical defect.

>
> if you haven't, run fsck. then man du, i suggest du -ak > /tmp/du.out.
> this should tell you what is taking up space, you can sort the output
> on size, too. good luck, --Loren
>
>

> > Could someone please tell me what to do next. Thanks. Neil

[Juha Laiho]

[email]neil@cfconline.co.uk[/email] (Neil Moore) said:

>I am working though the Linux From Scratch (4.1) tutorial without any
>problems until after I had changed the root to the new partition (at
>Part III) and mounted "proc" filesystem.
>
>At this point the disk seems to have completely filled with files that
>I can't account for. The disk is 1 Gb approx. formatted as Ext2.

Two possibilities. Either nautilus doesn't detect everything there,
or then there's some process holding unlinked files open.

>/dev/hda5 1494204 1494204 0 100% /mnt/lfs

Do "du -sk /mnt/lfs". If even this comes up with a figure that is wildly
different from what you see with "df", then it's the latter guess,
a process keeping open handles to unlinked files.

As for "du", someone else already wrote how to get sorted, categorised
output from du, to narrow down the location of the space-consuming
files, so I won't repeat that.

Then to the latter. On Unix systems, if you "remove" a file that is still
open somewhere (a binary or library for a process being executed; a conf
file being kept open by a process; a text file open in an editor; ...),
then the file will not be truly removed. It won't be accessible through
the directory entry from that time on, but will still occupy all the disk
space it did - so it's not yet really removed. The space will be freed
only when the last process keeping that file open closes the file (either
by exiting or just by calling close() on the file descriptor).
--
Wolf a.k.a. Juha Laiho Espoo, Finland
(GC 3.0) GIT d- s+: a C++ ULSH++++$ P++@ L+++ E- W+$@ N++ !K w !O !M V
PS(+) PE Y+ PGP(+) t- 5 !X R !tv b+ !DI D G e+ h---- r+++ y++++
"...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)

[roland]

Juha Laiho wrote:

> [email]neil@cfconline.co.uk[/email] (Neil Moore) said:
>

>>I am working though the Linux From Scratch (4.1) tutorial without any
>>problems until after I had changed the root to the new partition (at
>>Part III) and mounted "proc" filesystem.
>>
>>At this point the disk seems to have completely filled with files that
>>I can't account for. The disk is 1 Gb approx. formatted as Ext2.

>
>
> Two possibilities. Either nautilus doesn't detect everything there,
> or then there's some process holding unlinked files open.
>
>

>>/dev/hda5 1494204 1494204 0 100% /mnt/lfs

>
>
> Do "du -sk /mnt/lfs". If even this comes up with a figure that is wildly
> different from what you see with "df", then it's the latter guess,
> a process keeping open handles to unlinked files.
>
> As for "du", someone else already wrote how to get sorted, categorised
> output from du, to narrow down the location of the space-consuming
> files, so I won't repeat that.
>
> Then to the latter. On Unix systems, if you "remove" a file that is still
> open somewhere (a binary or library for a process being executed; a conf
> file being kept open by a process; a text file open in an editor; ...),
> then the file will not be truly removed. It won't be accessible through
> the directory entry from that time on, but will still occupy all the disk
> space it did - so it's not yet really removed. The space will be freed
> only when the last process keeping that file open closes the file (either
> by exiting or just by calling close() on the file descriptor).

This may be a dumb sugestion but this has happened to me when a device
file (e.g /dev/fd0) was writen to and /dev/fd0 was really a regular
file.in that case whatever gets copied to it just makes /dev/fd0 huge .
Just a thought (8^).

[Ohmster]

lcoe <lcoe@c1932201-a.attbi.com> wrote in
news:TQXMa.3964$Ix2.1168@rwcrnsc54:

> if you haven't, run fsck.

How does one run fsck. I tried that once and got a serious warning about
doing this on a mounted file system. If I wanted to fsck my linux drive,
how does one do this?

--
~Ohmster