Where is my 2G? - MC

[Brian Astill]

On Thursday 12 April 2007 21:21, Michael Cohen wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 09:32:01AM +0930, Brian Astill wrote:
> > THE cause of all the trouble is Midnight Commander (from
> > root) accepting my instructions to copy /home to an
> > _unmounted_  /dev/hdb7.  It's reports of progress were
> > entirely
>
> Theres your answer - (btw i suspect you mean /mnt/hdb7). Unix
> uses /dev/hdb7 as a device file to access the raw device - you
> mount it on top of a directory (any ordinary directory) to gain
> access to the contents of that file system. If /mnt/hdb7 was
> not mounted - mc probably copied it on to that directory. (its
> just a normal directory after all). 

Thanks for the absence of technojargon.
Yes, of course you are correct. It is because MC was writing to a 
directory on hda2 that it ran out of space.  Understood.

> After reboot your os 
> mounted the partition over the top of the directory thereby
> masking the actual content of the directory (replacing it with
> the contents of the device).

Yes, that should be correct, too.

> If you unmount the device, you will see your files sitting in
> the directory.

No!  THAT is the MC bug.   It SHOULD have done as you say, but the 
only visible file was an empty lost & found directory.  The 
copied files are "somewhere", in some form, on hda2.  The space 
they occupy (about 2G) is still unavailable to me.
.
Maybe, now fsck has done its job, the files I want to delete will 
be available in recovery mode.  Will let you know.

-- 
Regards,
Brian