Phantom Files, Filesystem Full

[Chuck Swiger]

Ryan Winograd wrote:
> I was editing a conf file in /etc and, when i tried to write the file vi 
> told me it couldn't save because the filesystem is full! I ran df and, 
> sure enough, the / fs has 245M of 258M used:
> 
> Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
> /dev/ad0s1a    248M    245M    -17M   108%    /
> 
> This was certaintly a surprise, because all my data is located on other 
> partitions, so i ran du -h -d1 / to find the culprit, but i still 
> couldn't find what is using up all my / disk space! What can i do to 
> find out where all my disk space has gone?!?!

I suspect that running "du -hxd 1 /" would be more helpful, BTW.

Anyway, it would help to know what other filesystems you have (ie, is /tmp on 
root, or /var?).  Regardless, a good place to check is whether /root has grown 
out-of-control-- logging into X + KDE or GNOME, running apps like Mozilla 
which create big user profiles, for example, although trying to run "perl 
-MCPAN" or many others things could also do it.

Otherwise, you might have files which have been deleted but are still being 
held by a process using that space.  If something was generating a huge 
logfile which you'd already deleted, try restarting it and/or syslogd.  For 
that matter, try rebooting the system and seeing whether you get more space 
afterwards.

-- 
-Chuck