a monster stole my /

[gs_stoller at juno.com]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 11:34:54 -0400 Jerry McAllister wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 02:40:09PM +1000, Hartleigh Burton wrote:
>> Hiya!
>> 
>> I have a problem with / currently being at 108% capacity. I have found  
>> a previous thread in the archives which explains a few questions but I  
>> can't find what is taking up all the additional space. At best without  
>> destroying what I still do not understand I can manage to get / to  
>> about 101% capacity.
> oI see you have used du.   I usually do   
>                                          cd /
>                                          du -sk *
> Since the 'h switches between K, G, M,  I find it a little harder
> to eyeball than picking just one of K, M or G.    I also find the -s
> more useful in a general situation than -dn since it gives a 
> good general summary.
> The one thing I can think of would be some file that has been rm-ed
> but not released by some process.   The space will still stay allocated
> until the file is released by all processes.   A reboot can help that.
> If reboot doesn't free anything up, then you have some serious digging
> to do.    Your / file system is quite large and you have most of the
> usually culprits moved somewhere else.   So, you should not need 
> anywhere near that much disk for /.
The arithmetic is being done by a computer program which must have maximum sizes set for numbers (e.g., long [4 bytes], maybe  ulong , etc.), not by a human being who can adjust for the size of the data (though he may make other mistakes).  Try to get the raw data on which the arithmetic is done to see if the error may be there, and you could point to a program needing a correction (which may not be possible unless one goes to floating point which causes other problems)