a big file taking all space not trace-able and visible. how to delete?

[Steve Flynn]

On 24 January 2013 22:14, Rajeev Prasad <rp.neuli at yahoo.com> wrote:

> i had rebooted ther server but it would still show 100% space used (it was
> 3GB + file).

> but as soon as i killed the ssh process i got my space back.

When you rm'd the file it was unlinked. The filesystem doesn't
actually get the space back until all processes which had a lock on
the file release that lock. That's why I suggested rebooting the
machine to ensure that all processes released their locks as I'd
assumed you'd already killed all processes which would have been
involved in this.

I'm confused though - if you already HAD rebooted the server, how did
you have to kill the SSH process after the reboot... obviously that
wasn't the order in which things happened!

> I have now forced fsck on this system. just to be sure.

Shouldn't be nercessary but it won't hurt.

-- 
Steve

When one person suffers from a delusion it is insanity. When many
people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.