df and du giving grossly different used space

OK, a curiosity I just happened to notice while running a backup of my desktop...

phillips@phillip-desktop:/home$ sudo df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2              29G  3.3G   25G  12% /
varrun                506M   84K  506M   1% /var/run
varlock               506M     0  506M   0% /var/lock
procbususb             10M  148K  9.9M   2% /proc/bus/usb
udev                   10M  148K  9.9M   2% /dev
devshm                506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
lrm                   506M   18M  489M   4% /lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/volatile
/dev/sda3             116G   67G   44G  61% /home
phillips@phillip-desktop:/home$ sudo du -hs /home
52G     /home

Note that `df -h` tells me that /home has 67gb used, but `du -hs` tells me that /home is only 52gb... Now I could handle a minor variance between the two due to rounding, but 15gb / 30% difference?

Note I sudo'ed both of these command so it shouldn't be permissions or anything. What am I missing?

This is Linux Mint 2.1 "Bianca" which is based on Ubuntu 6.10.

Possibly 52GB free?

116-67=49

Less error. But I am clutching at straws.

http://gcolpart.evolix.net/blog21/df...vs-du-command/ might give the answer.

Hi,

The 'dotted' files are not counted with an ordinary du.

Try this in your homedir:

cd ~
du -sch *

and then

du -sch .*

Hope this helps.

EDIT:

The above is BS. Sorry.

Mmmmm....... this (du -sch .*) will start one dir up, it doesn't take the dot files.

Originally Posted by Wim Sturkenboom http://gcolpart.evolix.net/blog21/df...vs-du-command/ might give the answer.

Boom boom, that was it

root@phillip-desktop:~# lsof | grep '(deleted)' | grep home
beagled    4714   phillips   11w      REG        8,3 18865228196    5197427 /home/phillips/.beagle/Log/2007-05-16-19-35-56-Beagle (deleted)

I killed that process, and the file is no longer open but it's still showing a discrepancy - at least I know where it's coming from. fsck might help...

Thanks all for the quick replies!