2

My Ubuntu server is installed on hard drive with very simple partitioning

/dev/sdd1   *           1        1824    14647296   83  Linux
/dev/sdd2            1824        3283    11718656   83  Linux
/dev/sdd3            3283        4864    12702720   82  Linux swap / Solaris

So about 14GB is allocated for / and about 12GB for /home. The rest is swap.

Today I noticed when I login I got a warning that running out of space. df shows the following

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdd1              14G   13G  619M  96% /
none                  2.9G  260K  2.9G   1% /dev
none                  2.9G     0  2.9G   0% /dev/shm
none                  2.9G  852K  2.9G   1% /var/run
none                  2.9G     0  2.9G   0% /var/lock
none                  2.9G     0  2.9G   0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sdd2              12G  2.6G  8.0G  25% /home

At this point I am trying to understand what eats 13G on my root partition. du shows the following output

$ sudo du -hxL --exclude="/home" --max-depth=1 / # excluding home because
                                                  it's other partition

0       /sys
4.0K    /selinux
4.0K    /mnt
447M    /lib
4.0K    /opt
1.9G    /usr
64M     /etc
447M    /lib64
31M     /boot
8.2M    /sbin
8.0K    /man
48K     /root
358M    /var
0       /proc
0       /dev
4.0K    /srv
16K     /lost+found
28K     /tmp
12M     /bin
3.2G    /

parted

Disk /dev/sdd: 40.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  15.0GB  15.0GB  primary  ext4            boot
 2      15.0GB  27.0GB  12.0GB  primary  ext4
 3      27.0GB  40.0GB  13.0GB  primary  linux-swap(v1)

The sum is far not 13G, in fact it's around 5G. So what exactly takes space on my root partition?

5
  • Can you try du -hx / | sort -h instead?
    – elmicha
    Mar 8, 2012 at 17:28
  • 2
    Have you rebooted your server recently? If not, it could be a large file that has been deleted, but is still hold by a running process. Thus it won't be visible in the filesystem, but still use diskspace.
    – Grumbel
    Mar 8, 2012 at 18:07
  • @elmicha: same result (my sort doesn't have -h)
    – Pablo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 1:14
  • @Grumbel: The uptime was just 1 day. There must be some way to list such files. I've also tried to reboot again, but nothing changed.
    – Pablo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 1:15
  • Try to boot from a LiveCD. You could examine the filesystems while not being in use.
    – lgarzo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 15:05

2 Answers 2

1

I bet if you umount /dev/sdd2, you will see another 12GB /home folder

6
  • hmm... how to check that without umount? Device is currently actively used and I can't umount it. But you might be right, because df -x gave me 2 4.0K /home items in output... So what I've done wrong?
    – Pablo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 14:40
  • In fstab I have 3 mounts, for /, /home and swap. No double homes...
    – Pablo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 14:44
  • UUID=07476b60-d9da-49ca-b6f8-442713fc112e /home ext4 defaults 0 2 <--- could this very last 2 be the one?
    – Pablo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 14:48
  • I guess no, it's fschk :(
    – Pablo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 14:53
  • Can you check the sizes with gparted
    – jet
    Mar 9, 2012 at 15:32
0

Try the following in a terminal

$ sudo apt-get autoclean 

OR Try to kill updatedb process

$ ps aux | grep updatedb

Note the PID.

$ kill PID
1
  • ps shows I don't have updatedb running. I try to avoid auto* actions, rather I would like to understand what exactly is eating up the space.
    – Pablo
    Mar 9, 2012 at 1:27

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