Re: Upgrade Problem

[songbird <songbird@anthive.com>]

Michael Stone wrote:
> songbird wrote:
>>Roberto C  Sánchez wrote:
>>> It might also indicate files that exist (i.e., occupy blocks) without
>>> having directory entries.  For example, this is the case when a program
>>> creates a temporary file, gets the descritor back from the syscall, then
>>> immediatley calls unlink on it.  The file descriptor is still active and
>>> the file can be written/read with the descriptor reference, but the file
>>> cannot be seen with 'ls' and, as I recall, it will not show up in the
>>> calculation made by 'du'.  The calculation made by 'df' will still be
>>> accurate, though.
>>
>>  wouldn't fsck clean that up?
>
> not if the program is still running; it's not an error condition. the 
> only case where fsck would help is if the whole machine crashed.

  i should have noted that i would likely have 
killed off processes and unmounted the file system
before fsck'ing it.


> the traditional gotcha for "nonexistent file taking up space" is 
> something generating a large log file, when someone tries to free the 
> space by deleting the file. if the program writing it is still running, 
> the file is gone but the space won't be freed until the program lets go 
> of the file. lsof has a "deleted" indicator which can identify this.

  *nods*


  songbird