LinuxQuestions.org

LinuxQuestions.org (/questions/)
-   Linux - General (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/)
-   -   How come file size differs between ls and df? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/how-come-file-size-differs-between-ls-and-df-611535/)

felixrabe 01-06-2008 01:13 PM
How come file size differs between ls and df?
 
Hi there,

I have a large file (a VirtualBox hard disk) which shows a size of about 8 GB in ls and about 4 GB of total disk usage in df. How come?

Code:
$ ls -l disk.vdi
-rw------- 1 fr fr 8589967872 2007-08-29 15:53 disk.vdi
$ ls -lh disk.vdi
-rw------- 1 fr fr 8.1G 2007-08-29 15:53 disk.vdi
$ df -h .
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7              19G  4.8G  13G  28% /media/bak7-fr-2
$ mount | grep sda7
/dev/sda7 on /media/bak7-fr-2 type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal)

pixellany 01-06-2008 01:28 PM
Do you know that disk.vdi is on /dev/sda7?

What does "du disk.vdi" tell you?

since the file is for a VM, is it possible that the file size gets reported differently?

colucix 01-06-2008 01:47 PM
Maybe it is a "sparse file". You can find a definition on the Wikipedia. A common example on many systems is the file /var/log/lastlog
Code:
$ ls -l /var/log/lastlog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root tty 292584 2008-01-06 12:11 /var/log/lastlog

$ du /var/log/lastlog
28      /var/log/lastlog
You can also try the following test using the command find: cd to the directory where the file is stored, then do
Code:
# the following will print the allocated (total) space
find . -name disk.vdi -printf "%s\n"

# the following will print the actual size if sparse
find . -name disk.vdi -printf "%k\n"

felixrabe 01-06-2008 02:53 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by colucix (Post 3013479)
Maybe it is a "sparse file". You can find a definition on the Wikipedia. ...
That's totally it, thanks. I'm currently copying the file (over USB 1) around with 'cp -ax' and I'm glad that cp supports sparse files (saved quite some time :) ).

Code:
$ ls -lh disk.vdi
-rw------- 1 fr fr 8.1G 2007-08-29 15:53 disk.vdi
$ du -h disk.vdi
4.2G        disk.vdi

pixellany 01-06-2008 05:20 PM
How would you create a "sparse file"? (Other than the dd method in the Wikipedia article)

colucix 01-06-2008 05:57 PM
I don't know any other *NIX utility to do that. On the other hand you can always use a programming language like C or Python. Here is a simple example in Python
Code:
#!/usr/bin/python
file = open("/tmp/sparsefile", 'w')
file.truncate(1024 * 1048000L)
file.close()
this will create a sparse file of 1G, whose actual size is 0 bytes (since nothing has been written into).

xptools 01-06-2008 06:26 PM
FYI, there can be differences between df and du -s as well.



All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:17 PM.