Re: df returning inaccurate results

[michael <michael.n@strux.net>]

On Monday 24 February 2003 01:26, Caitrin Torres wrote:
> I noticed today that df is not returning correct results. I saw that I was
> low on disk space so I deleted two files from my home directory that
> together were taking up nearly 1GB and then reran df. It returned the same
> numbers as from before I deleted files. To wit:
>
> $df -h
> Filesystem    Size    Used    Avail    Use%    Mounted on
> /dev/hda5     2.8G    1.8G    939M     66%     /
> /dev/hda7     10G     8.8G    822M     92%     /home
>
> What confuses me is that du returns a very different number which *does*
> reflect the fact that I've deleted files.
>
> $du -csh /home/*
> 7.9G    /home/cait
> 7.9G    /total
>
> What can be causing this?

I'd guess, that some process has the two files in question still open.
Then, when deleting the files, only the corresponding directory-entry will 
vanish.
Only when the process closes the file, the data (which occupies the space) 
vanishes too.
Thus df returns the accurate results, whereas du has no chance to see and 
count
the files and their sizes.

HTH, Michael