Where are those 26 GB?

[Katixa]

Hi there,

I try to admin a dedicated server here, and last friday I realized that we got a "bandwidth" file that logs every activity on the network, so it was 26 GB. I finally discovered it after wandering why my system was using 33 GB from the 35 GB HDD, and after "du -c -h"-ing every directory in the system.

Well I went to Webmin and then used the "Update log" button, to create the statistics and then delete the file. But Webmin spent +48 hours processing so I decided to stop the process, closing the browser.

Then I just deleted the 26 GB file. Now, after 2 days, there are still two problems:

- Plesk continues reporting 3 GB free space.
- Plesk continues reporting 2.5% CPU usage (it normally is 0.01%).

I have done a du -c -h on every directory, one by one, but no 26 GB anywhere... if I do it on the root directory ( / ), I get the following message:

du: `.': No such file or directory
763M total

Before finishing the process, because obviously, there are not only 763 MB... I got 800MB only in web sites.

What could I do? Where could those 26 GB be?
Should I restart the server? I did not want to do it because of all the websites and email boxes there... but the 3% CPU and the free space is bugging me.

Thanks in advance for any help.



UPDATE:
It's me again.

This morning, the server increased CPU usage to 7% with no apparent reason and later POP3/SMTP service started doing strange things. I had to restart the system.

Now everything seems to be OK. CPU at 0.00%, and there are 5GB used.

So I think the problem is solved now.

Thanks!

[Katixa]

*DELETED*

[Dude500]

Just a reminder you shouldn't double post, make sure to edit them

[scm]

The classic way to lose disk space is to have a long running process writing to a file. You can delete the directory entry to the file, but while the process has it open, the data areas won't be released until the process terminates. Rebooting the system will obviously get rid of the process and the data will be released.

I'd suggest that any logging process cycles log files when they reach a specific size, so you can archive them and reclaim the space periodically without losing logged information.