Linode disk usage

Hi All,

We use several linodes, 512 and 1024, and one of our linode 512 has a strange disk issue.

We installed it last week, Debian 5, 32 bit, apt-get upgrade, update, install apache php mysql etc etc, nothing unusual (except that we use the dotdeb apt repository to have php 5.3.2)

So, the unusual is that the server is already pretty much full:

> li187-46:/# df -h -T

/dev/xvda ext3 16G 15G 492M 97% /

tmpfs tmpfs 250M 0 250M 0% /lib/init/rw

tmpfs tmpfs 250M 4,0K 250M 1% /dev/shm

but

> li187-46:/# du -chsx /*

3,7M /bin

4,0K /boot

4,0K /dev

3,7M /etc

3,0M /home

6,4M /lib

16K /lost+found

4,0K /media

4,0K /mnt

4,0K /opt

0 /proc

573M /root

3,2M /sbin

4,0K /selinux

4,0K /srv

0 /sys

208K /tmp

645M /usr

987M /var

2,2G total

So, a total is 2.2G is detected by du, but df says differently.

Anyone got a similar issue ? This is very annoying, and I can't get to find how the disk space is used…

Thanks!

3 Replies

delete, but still kept open, files?

lsof | grep deleted

-Chris

@Rodrigo:

li187-46:/# du -chsx /*

That du syntax would miss it if there is a hidden file or folder in your root directory.

ls -Alr /

Thanks chris and stever for your help!

I tried the lsof command, but got no results. Checked a few folders with ls -A, but still got no results.

However, that lsof command was a good hint, I thought that it would either be that my server was hacked and used as an ftp server (haha, but netstat showed no suspect open ports, yet that would mean nothing if my server was hacked), OR an inode issue (deleted files, but inodes still active). Actually, I rebooted, and now a df shows

/dev/xvda             16255928   1726940  13868388  12% /

Yay, that's much better. I have no idea why lsof didn't show that, or why the inodes were not released, so I'll continue to monitor closely this server, but at least for now it's not "out of disk space" anymore.

Thanks guys!

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