Mark Ferlatte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 09:24:41AM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen spoke, and we > listened to: > > There is something funny about the output of df and du -s. Just take > > a look at the typescript below: > > > > bash-2.03$ df /home > > Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on > > /dev/hda7 2058900 1652232 300239 85% /home > > bash-2.03$ du -s /home > > 661643 /home > > > > According to df about 1.6Gb of the /home partition are used whereas du > > -s says it about 1Gb less. Who's wrong? Or am I missing something? > > Some programs will open a tmp file and unlink it so that other > processes won't mess with it. (Think of it as an anonymous file > that gets cleaned up when the process closes it or dies). > > du won't show these files, because it queries file by file. Since > these files don't exist within the directory tree, du doesn't find > them and count them. df queries the filesystem to determine how > much space is left, and does count the space used by these files.
Fine, that explanation makes sense, at least enough to swallow it :-) > Basically, to reclaim that disk, you need to find the process that > is using the anonymous file, and kill it. Or you can just reboot, > which should clear it out. Uhm, thing is, the data above are from this morning, right after I booted my system. Any processes that created an `anonymous' file yesterday are not running today. -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development
