I got a really strange problem.

My gf's computer is a shitty ubuntu box and when i run df -h on it it's saying that /dev/sda1 has 16G available and 13G is used. However when i run fdisk on it, its giving the correct size of the drive as 320G. Problem is that its also showing that its using nearly ALL of the cylinders for that partition
meaning its using nearly the full 295G
df -h
fdisk -l
Then to make a final check i ran qtparted to look at the situation graphically , and it says that there is ONE 298G partition with 14G used. Then Just to make sure i started to write as much data to the partition as i could to see if df is lying to me and NO, it wont let me write more than 30G to that partition. wtf??.SUMMARY: df says 30G and sure os wont let me write more than that, then fdisk gives me the CORRECT size of disk and at the same time tells me that sda1 is using nearly all the cylinders, AND qtparted says sda1 is taking up 298G.
I hate Ubuntu as much as the next gentoo/slackware user, but this is supernatural stuff. If no one can help me, i think ill call a priest.

oops......posted twice

can you talk your g/f into using a diff distro?

2) was this previously a ms box and if so did you run partition magic or some other partition tool on it b4 ubuntu was installed.......it may not be ubuntu's fault I think.

3) I am a ex slacker myself.....if you have dsl...d/load live cds of pclinuxos Mdv suse etc and maybe she will think you are an angel.

I would agree that something is wrong, but it is not likely the fault of Ubuntu. For something like this, all Linuxes should be pretty much the same.

Here's a hunch: If you create a partition but don't format it, what does df do?---ie is it possible there is an issue with the formatting?

Just did an experiment: I created a new partition, but df does not give correct info until the partition is formatted and mounted. Thus I suspect that the issue is something to do with the filesystem---How about running fsck?

If this were my system, I would install Ubuntu in a 10GB partition, create another partition (100GB?) for data, and then leave the rest blank (unpartitioned) for future changes.

Finally I don't know why gentoo/slackware users would hate Ubuntu---unless perhaps they are elitists...

when you say crappy PC>. how old is the PC ? there was a certain Hardware limitation where some systems cannot see more than 32GB of a Hard drive.. no matter how large the drive.

http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/63Sector.htm

so how does the BIOS on that system see the drive ?

try to run, in single user mode, "fsck.ext3 -nf /dev/sda1" to be sure there is nothing wrong with the filesystem, as the partition table looks fine. The "-n will not change the filesystem (dry-run) and the -f option will force the check, no matter what the filesystem flag says.

But at end, I think farslayer give you the best hint/diagnostic: a crappy BIOS.

I'm a slackware user but don't hate Ubuntu, I just dislike Debian and it's derivatives... And Gentoo, ughh.. don't get me started on them..

I like and use Slackware and Ubuntu. Oh, and XP Pro, so I guess I don't know anything about operating systems.