root partition full

[CJ Tres]

On 12/21/2011 06:38 AM, Marius Gedminas wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 04:08:35AM -0600, CJ Tres wrote:
>> On 12/20/2011 04:28 PM, Marius Gedminas wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Did you run baobab as root (with gksudo)?  Perhaps it skipped some
>>> inaccessible directories in, say, /var, and thus couldn't count their
>>> sizes properly?
>>
>> Missed this earlier.
>> Yes I started it with gksudo baobab
>>
>>
>>> I'm not a fan of baobab.  I like du:
>>>
>>>    sudo du -xhs /
>>>
>>> does this print a number close to those 26G that df claims?
>>>
>>> If not, most likely there are deleted files kept open that occupy space.
>>> Check with
>>>
>>>    sudo lsof / | grep '(deleted)'
>>
>> Just ran this again (as above) and now it's showing a number of
>> files in /tmp, /usr/share/applications,/var/tmp, var/lib doodle
>> (over 20G!)
>
> There's your missing space.
>
> lsof also shows you the name and PID of the program holding the file
> open (first two output columns).  Kill the program, and the space will
> be freed.
>
>> and /usr/lib tracker and each line ends with (deleted) -
>> in red.
>> So these files are still present on /?
>
> Yes, in the sense that they're occupying space on / (but are not
> accessible any more).
>
>> I don't see them either in vim or nautilus (as root).
>
> Because they're deleted.
>
> Marius Gedminas
>

Many thanks for your help!
/ is now back to 20% use and 22G available.

So then the question is how did these deleted files continue to occupy 
space after they were deleted?... and more importantly how do I make 
sure it doesn't happen again?
I'm guessing I must have done something wrong - this is one I've never 
run into before.
With this last install of Natty I made / large due to running into root 
filling up in the past and thought it would be plenty big enough.
Now I'm thinking it's much larger than it needs to be.