How to recover disk space after filesystem full
Yes, it sounds like a stupid question, but let me tell the story. The log for my dhcp server filled up /var last night, which meant that dhcpd was also unable to hand out new leases, which meant that I had effectively been DOSed. I'll have to look into changing my logging policies. So, to correct the problem, I log into the router, removed the big log and several other files in /var to free up some space, and assumed this would correct the problem. It did not. Several minutes after freeing up a lot of space on /var, I continued to get filesystem full messages and df continued to show the capacity at 100%. I checked df -i for the inodes too. That was fine. I ran a quick fsck to see if that might shock the system into seeing all the space that I'd freed up, but no good. I ended up rebooting the box. Was there any other possible solution I could've tried? Why wouldn't the free space immediately appear as free? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to recover disk space after filesystem full
Luke Dean wrote: Yes, it sounds like a stupid question, but let me tell the story. The log for my dhcp server filled up /var last night, which meant that dhcpd was also unable to hand out new leases, which meant that I had effectively been DOSed. I'll have to look into changing my logging policies. So, to correct the problem, I log into the router, removed the big log and several other files in /var to free up some space, and assumed this would correct the problem. It did not. Several minutes after freeing up a lot of space on /var, I continued to get filesystem full messages and df continued to show the capacity at 100%. I checked df -i for the inodes too. That was fine. I ran a quick fsck to see if that might shock the system into seeing all the space that I'd freed up, but no good. I ended up rebooting the box. Was there any other possible solution I could've tried? You have to restart the service that was holding the log file(s) open. The system does not release the space while an application is 'using' the file, even after it's been deleted. Why wouldn't the free space immediately appear as free? Because technically, the space is not freed. lsof will help identify which process(es) are holding a particular file open, if you see that disk space is not recovered as expected after deletion: # pkg_add -r lsof pearl# lsof | grep auth.log syslogd 850 root 15wVREG 0,127 75199 237484 /var/log/auth.log Steve smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: How to recover disk space after filesystem full
Luke Dean lu...@pobox.com writes: Yes, it sounds like a stupid question, but let me tell the story. The log for my dhcp server filled up /var last night, which meant that dhcpd was also unable to hand out new leases, which meant that I had effectively been DOSed. I'll have to look into changing my logging policies. So, to correct the problem, I log into the router, removed the big log and several other files in /var to free up some space, and assumed this would correct the problem. It did not. Several minutes after freeing up a lot of space on /var, I continued to get filesystem full messages and df continued to show the capacity at 100%. I checked df -i for the inodes too. That was fine. I ran a quick fsck to see if that might shock the system into seeing all the space that I'd freed up, but no good. I ended up rebooting the box. Was there any other possible solution I could've tried? Why wouldn't the free space immediately appear as free? http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html#DU-VS-DF ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to recover disk space after filesystem full
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Luke Dean lu...@pobox.com wrote: Yes, it sounds like a stupid question, but let me tell the story. The log for my dhcp server filled up /var last night, which meant that dhcpd was also unable to hand out new leases, which meant that I had effectively been DOSed. I'll have to look into changing my logging policies. So, to correct the problem, I log into the router, removed the big log and several other files in /var to free up some space, and assumed this would correct the problem. It did not. Several minutes after freeing up a lot of space on /var, I continued to get filesystem full messages and df continued to show the capacity at 100%. I checked df -i for the inodes too. That was fine. I ran a quick fsck to see if that might shock the system into seeing all the space that I'd freed up, but no good. I ended up rebooting the box. Was there any other possible solution I could've tried? Why wouldn't the free space immediately appear as free? Because unlinking the file does not close the file. Restarting the dhcp daemon probably would have done the trick. The filesystem will free the disk space only when all references to the file have gone away. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to recover disk space after filesystem full
On Friday 22 May 2009 18:19:25 Steve Bertrand wrote: # pkg_add -r lsof Or use the native fstat(1). -- Mel ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: How to recover disk space after filesystem full
On Fri, 22 May 2009, Steve Bertrand wrote: Luke Dean wrote: I ended up rebooting the box. Was there any other possible solution I could've tried? You have to restart the service that was holding the log file(s) open. The system does not release the space while an application is 'using' the file, even after it's been deleted. Oh yeah! I forgot. I've got it configured to use syslogd to handle the dhcp logging, so I probably just needed to restart that one. I probably could've left dhcpd running. This kind of emergency always seems to happen before I get a chance to make coffee. Thank you. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
