On 12 May 2014 23:45, Ron Leach <ronle...@tesco.net> wrote: > On 11/05/2014 22:07, Sven Joachim wrote: >> >> A simple "mount --bind / /mnt" makes all those files >> visible under /mnt, and you can delete them at your leisure. >> > > I mounted the root partition at /mnt/test and used du. > > server4:/home/ron# du /mnt/test/mnt -hx --max-depth=1 > 2.7G /mnt/test/mnt/backupserver > 0 /mnt/test/mnt/test > 2.7G /mnt/test/mnt > server4:/home/ron# > > The 2.7GB is the remnant of a first backup attempt to a new backup server. > We backup over NFS, to a server mounted at /mnt/backupserver. > > During that backup trial, the new backup server was not configured > correctly, and this machine had not - actually - seen it, though it had > appeared to do so. As a result, this machine tried to do a backup to that > destination, /mnt/backupserver, and had - evidently - filled the root > partition before complaining about space. > > I hadn't understood - then - what had happened, and I corrected (only) the > missing NFS export and connectivity. That fix meant that the mountpoint no > longer 'pointed' to a set of directories on the root partition but - instead > - to the NFS export (correctly). A 'proper' backup then succeeded; what I > hadn't realised, until now, was that the original set of failed-test > directories was still there, filling the partition and, moreover, now > invisible.
Whenever I create a directory that is going to be a mountpoint, I immediately set its immutable attribute to prevent exactly this. Nothing can be written in an immutable directory. chattr must be run by root user. # mkdir mountpoint # chattr -V +i mountpoint -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/CAMPXz=rhsxkrdyn9zaw9jyvn7x1-vl7t061bnfxe5afyyqc...@mail.gmail.com