Crashdamage Posted August 24, 2003 Report Share Posted August 24, 2003 My / partition has suddenly decided that instead of something like 27% full, it's 100% full. I noticed this after I used DiskDrake to shrink the /mnt/win_data partition to give more to /data2 on the /dev/hdd drive. Believe me, I did absolutely nothing to any of the /dev/hda partitions *especially* / - I'm not nuts...anyway, that was a few days ago, and may not be related - or could and I didn't notice before 'cause everything's running fine. [tim@tim tim]$ df -H Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda5 818MB 776MB 147kB 100% / /dev/hdb1 98GB 21GB 72GB 23% /data1 none 395MB 0 395MB 0% /dev/shm /dev/hda9 10GB 3.1GB 6.5GB 32% /home /dev/hda1 2.0GB 1.1GB 986MB 51% /mnt/win_c /dev/hda7 4.1GB 1.6GB 2.3GB 40% /usr /dev/hda8 2.1GB 488MB 1.4GB 25% /var /dev/sda1 10MB 3.3MB 7.1MB 32% /mnt/sda1 /dev/hdd5 56GB 17GB 35GB 33% /data2 /dev/hdd2 5.0GB 365MB 4.6GB 8% /win_data Right now, everything is working just fine, but this is a real problem, since it means a kernel panic is only a reboot away. This has happened to me twice before, once with ext2 and once using ReiserFS. / is ext3 now. Previously, the only solution I found was reformat and reinstall. There don't seem to be anything like log files that went nuts and grew extremely large, everything seems normal. So this must be a file system error, but would running fsck do any good? Since it's the / partition I can't unmount it to try repair unless I shut down and run fsck from rescue mode, which of course means I'm screwed if fsck (or something else?) can't repair the file system. At least right now I'm still up and running. Any ideas? Google has been little help. I'd like to have a better idea of what I can do before I try anything I'm sorry for later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 I've had this problem ... 'twas when gftp couldn't resolve a domain name .. and I left it running knowing that soon enough my net connection would come back up. my root partition (100GB) went from 10% to 100% in 12 hours :shock: when I tried to find out what was going on, I found nothing. no big log files no big .xsession-errors nothing ! I logged off (not reboot) and watched as the disk emptied itself, until it reach 11% full ... whoch was expected. the reason was the error were not being flushed to the log files ... they seem to be sitting nowhere, but using disk space ... go figure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glitz Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 Check for garbage in the /tmp directory. If you download stuff from the web it tends to be downloaded here first before being copied to the final destination directory. Glitz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kjel Oslund Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 It's possible that some process is writing to an invisible temp file. A program can open a temp file, unlink it and then continue to write to it. The file is not visible because it has no directory entry, but exists none-the-less until the program closes it or exits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 Another possibility is that you did a mandrake update and selected a large number of updates? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted August 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 I've heard about the "invisible" file thing before, where a file manager or even "find" function run in a terminal won't show anything. The box is now not quite crashed, 'cause I can't really do anything on it, but I can still access the shared files from another Linux box. But basically it's down, a very sick puppy. This weekend I'll have more time to fool with it, and before I give up and reinstall I'm gonna try to at least get it back up in Level 1 before I reboot it. I hear that from there sometimes you can get to this stuff and do some good. Basically, I don't think it's any of these things, or a hardware problem. I think it's quit now because the logfiles have used up the last few free bits on /, but I don't think the logs are the cause of the full partition to start with. Before it quit I did quite a bit of fooling around and the partition info is ok, so I didn't lose that, and the HD passed all tests. In fact, everything seemed just peachy except if you looked at the space on /. As far as I can tell my / file system just got trashed somehow. Probably has something to do with some serious file system and Xfree86 problems I had a couple of weeks ago when I tried to install some security updates and it went very wrong. But I'm not certain that was when it barfed, it's just all I can think of, and I just happened to notice it was 100% full Saturday. You can bet your ass I'll investigate all possibilities before a format and reinstall. Probably the only hope of a fix is fsck...but thanks for the suggestions... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 if you want to check into whether you have large numbers of files somehow, check out the df command.. man df It will help you see how big each subdirectory is starting from root. Then you can go into that directory and repeat the df command until you locate the location of the files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 You can also search for *.core files to see if there are some core files hanging around somewhere. (I think you'll have to be able to boot into that install of Linux, though). Maybe you can use the first installation disk and hit F1 at the prompt and choose the Rescue option. Then I think it's 'Mount my installation under /mnt' then 'Go to console'. Sorry, I can't boot into Linux right now to be more specific. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 Something that was brought up here: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=7452 Did you happen to create and try to fill a new partition? Happened to me and I couldn't figure out why. Is that something you did by any chance? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted August 26, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 Thanks for suggestions, but... Cannonfodder: Been there, done that, also du, etc. I used df -H to show partition usage in my original post. Couldn't find anything unusual except a full /. LiquidZoo: Nope. Steve Scrimpshire: Haven't done that, but I wanna try and get it back to Level 1 and try some other stuff before I do anything requiring a reboot. Most likely explanation I've found so far is whatever bits are set (or whatever) in the file system that keeps track of usage is set wrong, giving false fill info. It probably happened when fsck had to try and fix a buch of file errors after that fscked up attempt at installing security updates and I just didn't notice the full / 'til Saturday. I had some major file system errors after that friggin' update attempt, and fsck did a lot of repairs. Can't even begin to remember what they were now, I just kept typing "y" when it asked to do something. At the time, I was having a "kernel panic" of my own and in no position to argue with it anyway. I was amazed I got a running system again, though it took some more work to put things back, it didn't just "heal" itself and run normally. Some programs (like Xfree86) had to be reinstalled, etc. Anyway, if that is the problem and fsck can't find and correct the errors again, this time I'm really fscked. Could be worse - I do have full backups of all partitions on the hdd drive, so even worst case I'm not gonna lose anything but a lot of time. Normally, I'd quit screwin' around, reload and be done with it, but I'm not kidding when I say this is no simple installation...it'll take quite a while to re-create. Besides, I'm learning things just by trying to fix it, things that could *really* be handy later. I'll be checking into all these other possibilities further before I try repair with fsck. Just buried with work and don't have much time right now. I want to work on this when I've got a few hours to devote to it so I don't hose a fixable system gettin' in too much of a hurry. I'm a little slow ya know...gotta have thinkin' time... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 It could be a temp or hidden file. I'd suggest the best way is from the rescue ... Basically though whatever you do will be liable to loosing data.... The only option that doesn't is finding some big files that you could delete.... I'd do that first but from RL 1 or rescue mode. I think you are probably right and this isn't the problem but it is the least destructive/damaging one so I'd try it first and HOPE your wrong .... Boot into it You could then run a fsck on /dev/hda5 to be safe. Then you could try a tunefs (sorry at Win at the moment). Try something that doesn't require a move. Perhaps change the root reserved space from the default (5%) to say (6%)...? Hopefully it would clear the error in the fs definition if thats what it is. Another option might be deleting your swap partition.... force a rewrite of the partition table....?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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