Re: disk space disappeared
On 2/10/16, Gary Dale <garydale@torfree.net> wrote:
> I have a Jessie/64 server that seems to have lost a lot of disk space.
> It boots from a 55G SSD (mounted as /) with a RAID6 array for /home. df
> shows that the SSD is full but I can't find out where the space has
> gone. When I add up all the space in the various directories off /, they
> don't come anywhere near 55G. du -cxh shows only 4.7G being used.
>
> I used tune2fs to set the fsck count for /dev/sda1 to 1 and rebooted. It
> didn't report any errors (system doesn't boot from USB or I would have
> used sysrescuecd).
>
> I also tried using fstrim (although the SSD is mounted with the discard
> option) but that didn't help. The command showed space being freed up,
> but the df command returned the same result.
>
> Any ideas on what is going on?
A Life Lesson Learned the Cindy Sue Way was.... one spot to always
check is... under /media/[user]...
I'd been meaning to write it up. Seems like I had at least one other
thought about it, too, but that escapes me just now.
So what had happened was... In my instance(s), it was a combination of
rysnc and a faulty USB connection for an external hard drive. Rsync
would just create a new target instead of complaining that one I
wanted didn't exist (because the USB connection had just once again
failed)..
Since I was copying to that external hard drive,
/media/elf/data-partition/copied-files-directory was where it was
going. When rsync couldn't find that (because the USB connection had
just once again failed), rsync simply created that... SOMEHOW on my
primary hard drive under /media/elf.
Took a couple months before I discovered it had been happening. That
occurred when I by accident noticed something called
/media/elf/data-partition_.......
And /media/elf/data-partition__
AND /media/elf/data-partition___
Flailing around on my hard drive, all ONLY visible and accessible
directly under /media.
The additional "__" and "___"? Created k/t a mix of how both rsync and
my Debian (likely Jessie as testing then) were trying to accommodate
my scenario.
The secondary issue became that my Debian very quietly began mounting
the (faulty USB) external hard drive by adding its own "_"(s) once the
original /media/elf/data-partition name became permanently "mounted"
under /media. Apparently addending an upward number of "_" is, or at
least was, part of renaming nomenclature done on the fly if something
already appears under /media.
Moral of the Story is that hard drive space was very quietly being
eaten alive while that was going on in a place we don't normally
visually inspect... and that space usage also was not being reflected
numerically via any utility tool package I knew to run at that moment.
See why I hadn't tried to write it up yet? *grin!*
Cindy
--
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA
* runs with duct tape *
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