Thank you Tom,
But, you do realize that i'm going to be chewing on this one for a little
while to really digest it. Even so, I so much appreciate you taking the
time to explain this to me. This is an awesome slice of the "linux" steak
as it were for me to chew on. File system theory is good brain candy.
--
Mark
*****
"what knowledge I have managed to accumlate over the years
at times becomes obscured and even hidden amidst the vast
emotional onslaught of my children. You never finish being a parent. :)"
On Tue, 22 May 2001, Tom Schutter wrote:
> Lets say that you have /var on a separate partition, i.e. you have a
> /var entry in /etc/fstab. To make this work, you must have an existing
> /var directory in the root "/" partition to mount the physical partion
> on to. Normally the /var directory in the / partition is empty.
>
> If a file exists on the / partition in the /var directory, you will
> not see it if the physical var partition has been mounted on top of
> the /var directory. But you will see it after you have unmounted
> the /var partition.
>
> For example:
> # ls -a /var
> .
> ..
> cache
> local
> log
> ... and more
>
> # umount /var
> # ls -a /var
> .
> ..
> big_honkin_10gb_hidden_file
>
> # rm /var/big_honkin_10gb_hidden_file
> # mount /var
>
> Problem fixed.
>
> So how does big_honkin_10gb_hidden_file get created? Usually because
> something went wrong with the mount process at one time. /var was
> not mounted. Some programs (or unaware sysadms) created some files
> in /var. But because the physical /var partition was not mounted,
> the files were actually being created on the / partition instead.
> Then later the /var mounting problem was fixed, and those files
> "disappeared".
>
> Mark Weaver wrote:
> >
> > Tom,
> >
> > I'm almost getting what you're saying, but I'm a little confused as to
> > what you mean when you say that after unmounting the filesystem and do an
> > "ls" if it is not empty then I've found the missing space.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On Thu, 17 May 2001, Tom Schutter wrote:
> >
> > > This really sounds like a suggestion I saw earlier, in that you are
> > > hiding the file with a mount.
> > >
> > > Look at /etc/fstab.
> > > Drop to runlevel 1.
> > > Start unmounting filesystems. Do a "ls" on the mount point after
> > > you have unmounted the filesystem. If it is not empty, you have
> > > found your missing space.
> > >
> > > Mark Weaver wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Dean, Nick, Tom, and all,
> > > >
> > > > This is day three with this mystery still loose upon this poor machine and
> > > > I have yet to be able to find anything.
> > > >
> > > > This morning I "think" I managed to narrow things down a bit and taking
> > > > the suggestions given from the list used the searches provided. It would
> > > > appear from the readings I'm getting back from "du" and "df" that the file
> > > > I'm looking for is roughly 187MB in size however I'm unable to find this
> > > > file. I've attached a txt file to this message which contains the results
> > > > of what these two programs report the usage as.
> > > >
> > > > As you all suggested I dropped down to runlevel 1 and ran the suggested
> > > > diagnostics. Everything came back with the filesystem being in perfect
> > > > health. According to reiserfsck there doesn't appear to be anything wrong
> > > > with the system.
> > > >
> > > > any ideas?
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > Name: usage.txt
> > > > usage.txt Type: Plain Text (TEXT/PLAIN)
> > > > Encoding: BASE64
> > >
> > > --
> > > Tom Schutter (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
> > > Platte River Associates, Inc. (http://www.platte.com)
> > >
>
>
