df is maybe buggy?

Message

morlix · Post by **morlix** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:57 am

Hello,

a few days ago my disk filled up and i cleaned it.

Now after i cleaned severall big files i got this:

morlixsvr2 ~ # cd /
morlixsvr2 / # du -sh *
9.3M    bin
22M     boot
0       dev
8.0M    etc
1.1M    home
36M     lib
28K     lost+found
16K     mnt
197M    opt
257M    proc
516K    root
6.8M    sbin
12K     srv
0       sys
67M     tmp
2.5G    usr
776M    var
morlixsvr2 / # df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3              19G   19G     0 100% /
none                  125M     0  125M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1              69M   22M   44M  34% /boot

i think df does not report the correct disk usage...

can somebody image why?

grZ and happy christmas
morlix

morodoch · Post by **morodoch** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 9:01 am

What do you think is wrong with it?

morlix · Post by **morlix** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 10:41 am

i says / is filled with 100% but if you count all values from du -sh the count is not 19GB

PowerFactor · Post by **PowerFactor** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 2:13 pm

The numbers don't match because using the -h option causes them all to be rounded which introduces some error. Without the -h option they should match up.

morodoch · Post by **morodoch** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 2:14 pm

It's got to come pretty close, because bin, sbin and usr come to 18.6 or thereabouts?

PowerFactor · Post by **PowerFactor** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 3:07 pm

Uh, /bin/ and /sbin are listed in M not G.

I didn't look closely at the numbers before. Those are further off than rounding should cause. It's possible you deleted some large files that are still opened by program. I've had that happen with system logs. In that case they will not be listed under any directory but the space is still used until the program closes the file.

derFrank · Post by **derFrank** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 3:32 pm

Looking at the man page of du, i get a little confused, because it says in the chapter "POSIX OPTIONS" that the -s option refers to excluding subdirectories, whereas in the "GNU OPTIONS" the "-s" option expands to "--summarize".
I'm not sure, but might be you are actually using the "exclude subdirectory"-switch from the POSIX-Options, whereas you intended to use the summarize function.
To be honest, I don't know about this differentiation between GNU and POSIX Options and neither now how the programm actually can keep them apart.
i.e. how can "du" decide whether you wanted to say "summarize" or "exclude subdirectories" if you only gave the -s switch?
A workaround would be to explicitly use the long statement ("--summarize") if that was what you wanted, but this doesn't answer my question, so if anyone knows more about this, please elaborate...

hth Frank

PowerFactor · Post by **PowerFactor** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 4:49 pm

Actually according to manpage all of the POSIX options (including -s) do the same thing as the GNU equivalents.. The descriptions are just worded differently.

El_Presidente_Pufferfish · Sat Dec 24, 2005 5:39 pm

perhaps the journal of your filesystem is taking up space?

morodoch · Post by **morodoch** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:23 pm

Uh, /bin/ and /sbin are listed in M not G.

D'oh!

The other possibility are dot files in the root directory - maybe you have a swap file as /.swap or something similar?

mmbrothers · Post by **mmbrothers** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 9:54 pm

Have you tried checking the filesystem for errors. It is possible that the metadata has somehow gotten out of sync with the data on the drive. Often when a disk fills up it can cause wierd problems because the filesystem cannot write data to the drive as it normally would be able to. Definitely try an fsck.

morlix · Post by **morlix** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 1:35 pm

i think the problem was a open file from a program...
befor i startet this thread i deleted a logfile from seti which has 13GB and seti was still running...

now after a few hours it shows the real sizes

Code: Select all

morlixsvr2 ~ # df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3              19G  3.6G   14G  21% /
none                  125M     0  125M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1              69M   22M   44M  34% /boot
morlixsvr2 ~ # uptime
 14:34:53 up 162 days, 17:31,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

thanks for your hints!

grZ morlix

mmbrothers · Post by **mmbrothers** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 1:51 pm

Files not being deleted until all descriptors are closed ... will get you everytime

GauSs_ · Post by **GauSs_** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:12 pm

i don't get it

i have same problem with my /mnt/G_win (FAT32)

du shows 3gb free
windows also say 3gb free
partition magic says 3gb

but df shows 11gb free

MmmmJoel · Post by **MmmmJoel** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:19 am

You can 'emerge lsof' and run 'lsof +L1' to see all your unlinked files and the processes that are holding on to them.

GauSs_ · Post by **GauSs_** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 7:26 am

MmmmJoel wrote:You can 'emerge lsof' and run 'lsof +L1' to see all your unlinked files and the processes that are holding on to them.

i did so and can't see anything linked with /mnt/G_win or /dev/hda3