5.7GB of hda1 showing as used by buffer space?

[shocker-z]

/dev/hda1 is showing as 5.7GB of buffer used and the partition hda1 is 5.8GB this has happened over the past few days.. how can i tell from sheel (SSH) what is taking up all of this space?

I'm not very up on HW diags and mounted partitions and so on but i do have a 40GB or possibly 80GB HDD in the computer (not looked inside for over a year) whats the best command for showing all partitions?

here is the output of 'df'

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 6040288 5937752 0 100% /


The way i found out it is buffer usage is from a systeminfomation webmin module that i checked from work, not sure how acurate it is not used it before now..

Regards
Liam

[natrik]

/dev/hda1 is showing as 5.7GB of buffer used and the partition hda1 is 5.8GB this has happened over the past few days.. how can i tell from sheel (SSH) what is taking up all of this space?

Try these commands, to see if it's being used for something at the FS level; each will give its own potentially useful output:

mount

cat /etc/mtab

cat /etc/fstab

du <mount point of hda1>

.... so when I say the `du` command, put there where /dev/hda is mounted. This seems like generally it would be the `/` mountpoint... but most of this disk is unaccounted for. Also, what else is on that disk?

This is an intreguing problem! I'd like to help you to find the answer. Please post the results here from those commands! If there are huge results, you can catch them like this:

du <mount point> > catching.file

Then catching.file will be the file with all the output from that command. This is the only likely command (du) to have huge output. If it's too big to post, just attach it as a txt or zip file. I think the `du` will show what file is taking up all your space, but not necessarily why.

-- Nate

[shocker-z]

Thanx for your reply with ideas

Mount:
/dev/hda1 on / type ext2 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)


cat /etc/mtab:
/dev/hda1 / ext2 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0


cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/hda1 / ext2 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0


du:
Very weird it created the output yet i can't upload to my server thru ftp because disk space has all been used :S i even tryed ftp from the box and wouldn't download the files onto it either so not a permision problem either..

Uploaded to a diffrent box

http://www.ukchat.ws:111/ has the txt and a zipped up version i made it decending by size for easier reading


Regards
Liam

[natrik]

These directories add up to nearly all that room:

2756104 /var
2033252 /usr
725460 /home
+ 386832 /root
-------------------
~= 5938104 / (the whole disk ... 5.7GB)

I'd suggest to go through that list and start moving things that don't really need to live there anymore. Sorting by folder is also useful to see what sub-folders are large. I would start with /var/log and /var/oldsite ... there's almost 2 gigs right there. Servers and applications generally are okay with creating new log files (after you delete theirs), but if something doesn't work right, you might need to put in an empty logfile for it with the right permissions. To avoid that, it's generally safe to delete logs ending in with numbers like foo.log.3, bar.log.1 -- If you find a huge one with no numbers, stop the program before editing down or replacing its logfile (pay attention to ownership and permissions!)

I don't suggest manually cleaning /usr ... if you have apps or libs that you don't need, use apt or dpkg to either remove or purge them. Here's a document I constantly use to avoid a royal catastrophe for myself :
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap.../index.en.html

____________

/dev/hda1 is showing as 5.7GB of buffer used and the partition hda1 is 5.8GB this has happened over the past few days.. how can i tell from sheel (SSH) what is taking up all of this space?
---
I'm not very up on HW diags and mounted partitions and so on but i do have a 40GB or possibly 80GB HDD in the computer (not looked inside for over a year) whats the best command for showing all partitions?

My guess is perhaps you were conjoining the word "buffer" with the term "% used" somehow -- which can make sense if you put the "free" output right on top of the "du" output. ("free" will show you RAM usage, like "du" does for disks.) I also would venture that it had only become apparent over the past couple of days as your disk got to the "full" point. Maybe you added some stuff, or maybe the logs just filled up the drive.
---
The "df" and "mount" commands will only show you all MOUNTED partitions. You would have to mount that larger drive you have in there before being able to see it. Or, accessing it via a partitioning tool would allow you to see partitions before mounting. Be careful with fdisk and cfdisk, though.
Here is an excellent and thorough reference: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/

The fun part of the learning curve is the sharp part!
- Nate