SUMMARY (SUMMARY / is suddenly almost full (plus another question))

The problem was that I had deleted an oracle datafile the absolute wrong
way (on the OS, not by dropping it in the database). This was because in a
fit of half-awakedness I made my /u02 partition on / instead of where it
should have been. I tried to create 2 500mb datafiles on /...duh. The
first one was created, the second one failed due to the disk being full.
Deleting the file caused me a world of problems that I won't get in to,
but once I was able to clear that up (shutdown abort) the 500MB of space
that the filehandle was using was freed up.

The bottom line is that if you delete a file that some process is writing
to, the file will remain open until that process is killed. One way to
find out if this is happening to you is to compare the output of df -k /
(or whatever partition is fuller than it should be) to the output to du (I
forget the exact switches to just get the total disk usage of the /
partition without checking the subdirectories)

If there's a disparity there, then something is up.

Other suggestions were to use lsof to look for files that 'don't exist' as
far as you can tell via the traditional methods. Also, when people do
backups to /dev/rmt/0 sometimes someone will inadvertently type /dev/rmt/O
(the letter O) which makes a big file in the /dev/rmt/ directory called
O. This apparently happens a lot, because about five people suggested it. 

In the end, my / partition is back to a happy 55% full and I'll never
delete an oracle datafile again.

-Dave

Dave Lowenstein
Programmer/Analyst
Instructional Technology Services
San Diego State University
(619)594-0270
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/its

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 08:18:29 -0500
From: Kevin Buterbaugh <Kevin.Buterbaugh@lifeway.com>
To: Dave Lowenstein <dlowenst@mail.sdsu.edu>
Subject: Re: SUMMARY / is suddenly almost full (plus another question)

Dave,

     Yes, there is.  If a file is deleted, but a process is still 
accessing it, then df will show the space still allocated (because it is), 
but ls and find won't show the file.  So, if that's the case, how do you 
find the file?  Unfortunately, there's no easy answer to that question. 
You can download lsof from www.sunfreeware.com.  It'll show you all the 
files you're processes have open.  You could then look to see if those 
files have been deleted.  HTH...

Kevin Buterbaugh
LifeWay

"Anyone can build a fast CPU.  The trick is to build a fast system." - 
Seymour Cray



Sent by:        sunmanagers-admin@sunmanagers.org
To:     sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
cc:      

Subject:        SUMMARY / is suddenly almost full (plus another question)

Thanks to the many folks who responded. The general consensus was to go to
the / directory and do a du -sk *, and then do the same on any lower
directories that looked suspiciously large. 

Another suggestion was to do something along the lines of find / -xdev
-size +10000 which looks for files over a certain size within the
device. Since I have /var and /opt partitioned out I didn't want find
telling me about files on those partitions. -xdev fixed that.

In the end, I can't find what has grown so much so fast. Is there any
chance that there could be some kind of large file hanging around that
find or du wouldn't see?



Dave Lowenstein
Programmer/Analyst
Instructional Technology Services
San Diego State University
(619)594-0270
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/its

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 17:34:20 -0400
From: Rick Fincher <rnf@tbird.com>
To: Dave Lowenstein <dlowenst@mail.sdsu.edu>
Subject: Re: / is suddenly almost full

Hi Dave,

You can use du (disk use).  You might want to check your /var directory. 
If
it isn't a separate partition it can fill up / because all the logs, 
queued
print jobs, and mail are in subdirectories of  /var.

Also, if you add patches with the backout option (the default) it puts the
old files in /var.

Rick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Lowenstein" <dlowenst@mail.sdsu.edu>
To: <sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 2:13 PM
Subject: / is suddenly almost full


> I have a newly installed solaris 8 sparc server. After the install, my
> 1.5gb / partition (which includes /usr) was at around 60% full. Now it's
> 96% full, and I'm trying to figure out what happened. I've installed 
some
> new software but none of it was on the / partition.
>
> What's the best way to figure out what's taking up so much space on / ?
>
> Dave Lowenstein
> Programmer/Analyst
> Instructional Technology Services
> San Diego State University
> (619)594-0270
> http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/its
> _______________________________________________
> sunmanagers mailing list
> sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
> http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
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