Partition full after deleting a large file

Partition full after deleting a large file

[Marcus Better]

Hi,

a buggy mail client (kmail) filled up my 4 Gb /home partition by filling
the .xsession-errors with several gigabytes of the same error message. I
removed the file, which was well over 2 Gb. But "df" still shows zero free
space, and I cannot create new files.

The /home partition is on a dmcrypt volume on LVM. The system is a Thinkpad
R60 (Core 2 Duo) running Debian unstable with custom kernel 2.6.20-rc6
(from the wireless-dev tree).

Here is some debug info:
~# df /home/
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/home       4193596   4193596         0 100% /home

~# debugreiserfs /dev/mapper/home
debugreiserfs 3.6.19 (2003 www.namesys.com)


Filesystem state: consistency is not checked after last mounting

home: Reiserfs super block in block 16 on 0xfe09 of format 3.6 with standard
journal
Count of blocks on the device: 1048432
Number of bitmaps: 32
Blocksize: 4096
Free blocks (count of blocks - used [journal, bitmaps, data, reserved]
blocks): 0
Root block: 32941
Filesystem is NOT clean
Tree height: 4
Hash function used to sort names: "r5"
Objectid map size 2, max 972
Journal parameters:
        Device [0x0]
        Magic [0x725b2966]
        Size 8193 blocks (including 1 for journal header) (first block 18)
        Max transaction length 1024 blocks
        Max batch size 900 blocks
        Max commit age 30
Blocks reserved by journal: 0
Fs state field: 0x0:
sb_version: 2
inode generation number: 1128605
UUID: 549f4bc1-6db1-44f6-9c69-1df7d5c440b5
LABEL: home
Set flags in SB:
        ATTRIBUTES CLEAN


Regards,

Marcus

Re: Partition full after deleting a large file

[Sander]

Marcus Better wrote (ao):
> a buggy mail client (kmail) filled up my 4 Gb /home partition by filling
> the .xsession-errors with several gigabytes of the same error message. I
> removed the file, which was well over 2 Gb. But "df" still shows zero free
> space, and I cannot create new files.

The .xsession-errors file is still open, and therefor not deleted from
disk (although you can't see it anymore). It will be deleted as soon as
you exit X. The same goes for logfiles.

Next time you can empty the file with: echo -n > .xsession-errors

> The /home partition is on a dmcrypt volume on LVM. The system is a Thinkpad
> R60 (Core 2 Duo) running Debian unstable with custom kernel 2.6.20-rc6
> (from the wireless-dev tree).
> 
> Here is some debug info:
> ~# df /home/
> Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/mapper/home       4193596   4193596         0 100% /home

I think you should get your space back if you exit X.

	With kind regards, Sander

-- 
Humilis IT Services and Solutions
http://www.humilis.net

Re: Partition full after deleting a large file

[Marcus Better]

Sander wrote:
> The .xsession-errors file is still open, and therefor not deleted from
> disk (although you can't see it anymore).

Oh, that explains it. Thanks!

> I think you should get your space back if you exit X.

I unmounted and then mounted the partition, which also solved it.

Thanks for you help,

Marcus