/ full?

[zscoundrel]

This may be, but I have a similar problems and have been forced to 
reboot several times recently and didn't get any space back.

Does anyone know if it is OK to delete the files from my 
/var/spool/up2date directory?  I have noticed that there is 1.8g in this 
dir. It appears to be mostly rpm and header files.

Carl Sappenfield wrote:

> If my suspicion is correct, and you don't stop the process which holds an
> open descriptor to the deleted file, you will never get your space back.
> Rebooting just seems to me the easiest way (on a home computer) to
> accomplish this if you have no idea what process is causing the problem.
> Let me describe in more detail what I think is going on:
> du is telling you how much space you've actually used, and df is telling you
> how much space the OS thinks you've used.  These numbers don't look like
> they match to me.
> (du looks at each file, and tells you how many bytes it takes up, and adds
> these numbers up for each directory.
> df asks the OS how much free space it thinks you have, and consequently how
> much you've used.)
> What happens (like I said, at least in AIX) is that if a file is deleted
> while an open descriptor is held, the file name is taken out of the FAT.
> That means du won't find it when it cumulates disk usage totals.  Because
> the descriptor is held, though, the OS doesn't recognize that space as being
> released, and df still reports the space as being used.
> That descriptor will not be closed until the process holding it open is
> stopped, at which point you will see your free space magically increase.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Duane Attaway" <dattaway at attaway.net>
> To: "Carl Sappenfield" <CSAPPENFIELD at kc.rr.com>
> Cc: <kclug at ItDepends.com>; <kclug at kclug.org>
> Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 9:25 AM
> Subject: Re: / full?
> 
> 
> 
>>On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Carl Sappenfield wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Looking at your du and df outputs reminds me of something I've seen in
>>>
> AIX,
> 
>>>which may apply to Linux...
>>>If I'm reading this right, du is implying you've only used about 2.5G in
>>>your / partition (/ less /home).  df is saying it's almost 5.3G.  In
>>>
> AIX,
> 
>>>this can happen when,  a file is deleted that a process is still writing
>>>
> to.
> 
>>>The only way to get the space back is to shut down the process that was
>>>writing to the now non-existant file.
>>>I would just reboot and then see if du and df match.
>>>
>>No, don't reboot!  Use du with the -x option to skip directories on
>>different filesystems.  This is what you want.  Also, the -c option of du
>>just gives the grand total.  Or if you want to see just part of the
>>results of the list, you can use the --max-depth option to control the
>>visual granularity.  So many options...
>>
>>By default du lists the cumulative total of the directory and all
>>directories mounted upon it.  You will see them all added together like it
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
> 
>