I’ve just had a message today from Ubuntu 11.04 that I have only 100 MB left, so I cleaned up some files, and I got 200 MB. Then, after a couple of hours, suddenly I have only 26 MB?! I tried df, du via mount --bind, /forcefsck with reboot – nothing could should what the culprit is – finally I searched big files, realized /var/log/syslog is 100MB+ and /var/log/kern.log is 200MB+ – blanked them with sudo bash -c 'echo > ...' and rebooted, and now I have some spare MB.
But now, I realize I have another problem with df:
$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 9,7G 8,8G 385M 96% / none 963M 696K 962M 1% /dev none 969M 12K 969M 1% /dev/shm none 969M 252K 969M 1% /var/run none 969M 0 969M 0% /var/lock /dev/sda6 9,7G 8,1G 1,1G 89% /media/disk $ df -h --block-size M Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 9845M 8960M 385M 96% / none 963M 1M 962M 1% /dev none 969M 1M 969M 1% /dev/shm none 969M 1M 969M 1% /var/run none 969M 0M 969M 0% /var/lock /dev/sda6 9845M 8235M 1110M 89% /media/disk
Note so for /, it says there are 9845M total; and Used 8960M – then remaining would be 9845-8960 = 885 M, however, here I have only 385M Available.
Also, for /media/disk, it says total 9845M, Used 8235M – then remaining would be 9845-8235 = 1610, however, here I have only 1110M Available.
In both cases, there is exactly 500 MB difference.
Where did this difference come from – and can I reclaim it?
Here is also lsof | grep 'deleted' – can’t see nothing suspicious here:
$ lsof | grep 'deleted' nautilus 1911 user 21u REG 8,5 142760 260562 /home/user/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home (deleted) nautilus 1911 user 22w REG 8,5 32768 268807 /home/user/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home-fe882154.log (deleted) python 1919 user 8u REG 8,5 4096 392258 /tmp/ffiqRK968 (deleted) python 2165 user 5w REG 8,5 0 132261 /home/user/.[SNIP].lock (deleted) python 2166 user 5w REG 8,5 0 132261 /home/user/.[SNIP].lock (deleted) python 2185 user 21r REG 8,5 142760 260562 /home/user/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home (deleted) python 2185 user 22r REG 8,5 32768 268807 /home/user/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home-fe882154.log (deleted) gnome-ter 2279 user 27u REG 8,5 640 392575 /tmp/vte5KDX2X (deleted) gnome-ter 2279 user 28u REG 8,5 4936 392605 /tmp/vteKRDX2X (deleted) gnome-ter 2279 user 29u REG 8,5 648 392947 /tmp/vteMZDX2X (deleted) ubuntuone 2544 user 17u REG 8,5 4096 392335 /tmp/ffiMErq0V (deleted) bamfdaemo 3235 user 12r REG 8,5 143868 269077 /home/user/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/root (deleted) bamfdaemo 3235 user 13r REG 8,5 32768 272310 /home/user/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/root-18092a02.log (deleted) firefox 5291 user 59u REG 8,5 33288 132262 /var/tmp/etilqs_YdeZiWSd5iQwJ4U (deleted) firefox 5291 user 60w REG 8,5 32768 132271 /var/tmp/etilqs_MNLXhEaEqoXMm9b (deleted) firefox 5291 user 70u REG 8,5 34952 132297 /var/tmp/etilqs_yXDdwVeMxmmdpNz (deleted)
Answers:
Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Method 1
Most probably this is ext2, ext3 or ext4 file system which reserve a few percent of disk space (by default 5%) to be used only by specified users (usually root).
If you create file system with mke2fs then -m option is what you are looking for:
-m reserved-blocks-percentage
Specify the percentage of the filesystem blocks reserved for the super-user.
This avoids fragmentation, and allows root-owned daemons, such as syslogd(8),
to continue to function correctly after non-privileged processes are pre‐
vented from writing to the filesystem. The default percentage is 5%.
You can change this value on already existing ext file system with tune2fs -m.
Method 2
du and df do not count the same things so it is rare from them to give the same results, though the differences are usually attributable to administrative overheads and areas reserved for special purposes. However, with 89% and 96% used you have much larger, and more urgent, problems to deal with.
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0