Disc Free (df) weirdness (FC2)

[Mike McCarty]

Craig White wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 12:49 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> 
>>Peter Arremann wrote:
>>
>>>On Thursday 06 October 2005 21:29, Mike McCarty wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Peter Arremann wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On Thursday 06 October 2005 21:10, Mike McCarty wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>At 93%, it must have been about 7098935 blocks used. How did a
>>>>>>reboot free up 1017187 blocks?
>>>>>
>>>>>When deleting a file that is currently being used by a program, the disk
>>>>>blocks are actually not freed up until the last process that has a closed
>>>>>the file. Most likely one of the files you deleted was still being used.
>>>>
>>>>I forgot to mention... I had NO programs running except for an xterm
>>>>with a shell in it, su to root. I had closed all window, and opened
>>>>only the one. I do use GNOME with X Window to manage the windows,
>>>>however. (I suppose it might have been a gnome-terminal.)
>>>
>>>Just because you don't run them, doesn't mean that you don't have a bunch of 
>>>programs running. just do a ps -ef and you'll see how much there is - even on 
>>>an idle system you often have a few dozen processes. 
>>
>>Yes, I am aware. But what process would have consumed about 1G, and then
>>deleted it, while *another* process had it also opened?
>>
>>
>>>Very often people try removing /var/log/messages and are surprised they don't 
>>>get disk space back until a reboot because they forgot to restart syslogd. 
>>
>>I guess I'm not making myself clear, somehow.
> 
> ----
> there was no way to know that - your 'today' du log didn't include /proc
> and neither of them included /dev so all anyone can do is speculate so
> it's not as if anyone can definitively offer an answer.

Umm, I actually posted the exact "du" commands which I used.
So, anyone who read the messages in toto would know exactly
what was included and what was not.

To repeat:

# ls /
bin   dev  home    lib         misc  opt   root  selinux  tftpboot  usr
boot  etc  initrd  lost+found  mnt   proc  sbin  sys      tmp       var
# du -s /bin /etc /home /lib /misc /opt /root /sbin /selinux /sys \
/tmp /usr /var | sort -gr >> dirsizes.out

Two days later, the results of the same command were essentially
unchanged, yet df showed about 1G missing. No installs. No huge
downloads. All unnecessary windows closed. (I realize lots of
system processes and daemons running.)

This is somewhat mystifying, and unsettling. Especially as I only
have about 1.5G free anyway.

Mike
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