File system bafflement

[Rashkae]

On 14-09-02 10:20 AM, R Kimber wrote:
> On Tue, 02 Sep 2014 08:38:01 -0400
> Rashkae wrote:
>
>> you can run this command to see which directories are taking up all the
>> space:
>>
>> cd /
>>
>> sudo du -shx *
> This gives:-
>
> 9.7M    bin
> 93M     boot
> 12K     dev
> 78M     etc
> 18G     home
> 0       initrd.img
> 0       initrd.img.old
> 705M    lib
> 3.5M    lib32
> 4.0K    lib64
> 16K     lost+found
> 16K     media
> 4.0K    mnt
> 8.0K    mount
> 136M    opt
> du: cannot access ‘proc/28846/task/28846/fd/4’: No such file or directory
> du: cannot access ‘proc/28846/task/28846/fdinfo/4’: No such file or
> directory du: cannot access ‘proc/28846/fd/4’: No such file or directory
> du: cannot access ‘proc/28846/fdinfo/4’: No such file or directory
> 0       proc
> 51M     root
> 2.0M    run
> 12M     sbin
> 4.0K    srv
> 0       sys
> 204K    tmp
> 7.9G    usr
> 4.2G    var
> 0       vmlinuz
> 0       vmlinuz.old
> 4.0K    webmin-setup.out
>
> But as I said /usr, /var, /tmp, /home, /usr/local are all on separate
> patitions.
>
> - Richard.

My bad. The x option doesn't work as I intended when the mout points are 
part of the file list you are seeking.

There's probably a clever way to work around that, but until I figure it 
out, I would suggest booting from a live cd and examining your root file 
system from there. My best guess: you have some large amount of data 
hiding behind one of those mount points. What do I mean?

Suppose on your root filesystem, you have a really big file called 
/home/bigfile.bin Then your system mounts the other partition as /home, 
effectively hiding bigfile.bin from your view, but that space is still 
being used.