partition not freeing it's space after deleting files from it

[Lowell Gilbert]

Simon Žekar <simon.zekar at literal.si> writes:

> after quite some time of flawless working my FreeBSD 4.7 server's
> "/var" partition apeared full. I've examined used space which reveals
> that partition could not be full.
> 
> `df -hi /var`
> Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused  Mounted
> /dev/twed0s1e   252M    78M   154M    33%    2388 30122    7%   /var
> 
> `du -d0 -h /var`
> 18M    /var
> 
> There were regular open files from syslog (fstat, lsof), since i
> thought that might be some reason of not releasing the space i've
> shoutdowned them all but nothing happened. Used space remained
> untouched.
> 
> Even if I create some random file on this filesystem, the used size of
> partition grows, but after deletion of this file the size does never
> shrink.
> 
> After reboot and fsck at boot the information about usage of partition
> are fixed, but endless growing exists, so i have to reboot server
> frequently to fix the filesystem's information.
> 
> The system is on 3Ware Escalade ATA RAID controller on RAID-1 array.

Is the fsck needed on reboot?  That would be a hint...