[Novalug] Still a Problem: re: full root partition problem

Jon LaBadie novalugml@jgcomp.com
Fri Oct 17 14:56:12 EDT 2008


On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 12:54:05PM -0400, Roger W. Broseus wrote:
> 
> On Thu, October 16, 2008 11:33 pm, Peter Larsen wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 23:07 -0400, Roger W. Broseus wrote:
> >> I'm getting a report that / is nearly 100% full. It is on a separate
> partition that is 19 GB. This occurred after I tried doing a backup with
> >> Simple Backup under Ubuntu.
> >
> >
> > What does "du -sh /" report?
> 
> 90G

That certainly doesn't match the 19GB you noted above.
> 
> >> I have the following on separate partitions: /boot and /home.

Does df report them as such?

# the root partition
$ df /
/                  (/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 ): 5998206 blocks   761607 files

# a separate partition
$ df /home
/home              (/dev/dsk/c1t6d0s1 ): 8791902 blocks  1213684 files

# a directory on the root partition looks just like root
$ df /usr
/                  (/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 ): 5998206 blocks   761607 files

I ask as one of my clients had something happen to prevent a
mounted partition from mounting.  Ended up working in / instead.
And they filled it all.

> > To see where data is allocated, you simply do: du -s /*
> >
> > It should list all directories/files in root and their summarized size.
> 
> as root in dir /, du -s /* reports, with my ##comments interspersed (## is
> NOT output from du):
> 
> 4776    /bin
> 65026   /boot
> 0       /cdrom
> 124     /dev
> 16544   /etc
> 27724420        /home
> 
> ## this does not make sense to me becuse /home is on a SEPARATE
> ## but the size is about right. Is this just a "pointer"
> ## like in /proc?
> 

No, you asked du, with /*, to look at each top level directory.

> 4       /initrd
> 0       /initrd.img
> 0       /initrd.img.old
> 513896  /lib
> 0       /link to pics sda1
> 48      /lost+found
> 45970859        /media

Got some cd's or other devices there?

> 8       /mnt
> 120624  /opt
> 0       /proc
> 16034768        /root
> 
> ## again, not making sense: if, as root, I cd to /
> ## all I see is /"Desktop" which is empty

Likely to be in "dot" directories.

Try cd'ing to /root and doing du -s .??* *

.??* is a poor-mans way to get all dot dirs except
. and .. (it skips single char dirs like .x, .y,
but hopefully you have none)

You might want to check / for dot dirs and files too.
They would be skipped by du -s /*

> 
> 6760    /sbin
> 4       /srv
> 0       /sys
> 1024    /tmp
> 2825776 /usr
> 513048  /var
> 0       /vmlinuz
> 0       /vmlinuz.old
> 
> So, with the two exceptions mentioned, I still don't see an reason for /
> to be reported as full.
> 
> >> I've searched for a large file or folder but am at a loss to find the
> offending "stuff."
> >
> > You're most likely having "temporary" files all over the place. But it
> really depends on what you asked the "simple backup" program to do. So
> once you know where disk is allocated, you may still have to revisit your
> backup job.
> 
> As mentioned above, I'm sure this is related to the backup job but I'm
> still stymied!
> 
> Thanks again, all who have taken a look at this.
> 

If things still look inappropriate, i.e. the totals don't match,
consider running fsck on the root partition.  Use a live cd to
boot and run the fsck program from there.  You don't want to
repair a live, active, root file system that is in use.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon@jgcomp.com
 JG Computing
 12027 Creekbend Drive		(703) 787-0884
 Reston, VA  20194		(703) 787-0922 (fax)



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