I wouldn't start deleting anything yet!
My UNIX knowledge on character and block devices ('c' or 'b' at the start of an
ls listing shows this) is a bit rusty these days, but a quick look on my iMac
reveals what I'd thought that 0, 1 and 2 are the same file (or inode to be
precise) as are 3, 4 and 5. The -i option to ls will verify this for you.
An ls for me on those directories also produces the same error which is no
surprise as they have only read permissions (as do mine) and you need 'x' to
allow searching of directories.
I imagine that all here is in order and your problem lies elsewhere, but your
best bet would be to look in the system/console logs using the console
application to see if something is looping and writing out error messages
repeatedly to disk. That's how we used to fill up our customers' hard disks
when I was at work :-)
Regards,
Stephen
On 15 Sep 2010, at 11:02, Ben Rubinstein wrote:
> Attempting to track down a sudden space gobbler (I start the day with 50GB,
> and by the afternoon get warnings of disk full; restart and all the space is
> reclaimed) I ran "sudo du -sh" from the root immediately after restart, so
> that I can run it again later and get a clue to where the data is going.
>
> But du fails with this message:
> du: Can't follow symlink cycle from ./dev/fd/3 to ./dev/fd/3
>
> Investigating /dev/fd I find it looks like this:
>
> $ ls -la
> total 0
> crw--w---- 1 benr tty 16, 0 15 Sep 08:32 0
> crw--w---- 1 benr tty 16, 0 15 Sep 08:32 1
> crw--w---- 1 benr tty 16, 0 15 Sep 08:32 2
> dr--r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 15 Sep 08:22 3
> dr--r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 15 Sep 08:22 4
> dr--r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 15 Sep 08:22 5
>
> $ ls -la 3
> ls: 3: Bad file descriptor
>
> $ ls -la 4
> ls: 4: Bad file descriptor
>
> $ ls -la 5
> ls: 5: Bad file descriptor
>
> Is this a very bad thing, or just mildly messy? As /dev/fd/3 (and 4 and 5)
> are evidently not doing anything useful can I just delete them so that they
> don't get in the way of du, or is this a symptom of something more serious
> that I need to investigate first?
>
> (NB: I've run a full Disk Utility verify&repair - and there was stuff, beyond
> permissions, to repair - but it made no difference to /dev/fd.)
>
> TIA,
>
> Ben
>
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Britain will lead the world towards combating climate change. He unveiled a
"revolutionary step" ... binding the UK to a 60-per-cent cut by 2050. - Tony
Blair, March 2007
but ...
Mr Darling will announce a multi-billion-pound strategy to widen many of
Britain's largest and busiest motorways, including the M25, M11, M1 and M42, to
as many as 12 lanes wide. - July 2003
... the growth the government foresees will require "the equivalent of another
Heathrow every 5 years." (Select Committee on Environmental Audit, March 2004)
The prime minister said the British government would continue to do all it
could to support Airbus. - November 2006
leading to ...
Doublethink:- The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind
simultaneously, and accepting both of them. - George Orwell
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