[SOLVED] Compressing/Removing files causing MORE storage usage???

Robbot · 08-09-2017, 06:58 PM

Hello,

I'm facing a really bizarre issue, tough not for the first time. I have a /var filesystem that's at 91% usage (6GB mounted). I noticed that after compressing 500mb of space from /var/log/ the percentage didn't drop at all. I then proceeded to remove 186MB of space from /var/tmp, which dropped the FS down to 86% usage. I then moved a a 136MB file from /var/account to /, which caused the FS to go back up to 88% usage.

Any ideas what's causing these crazy readings? /var doesn't have any other FS's under it. Also, I noticed that running "du -sm*|sort -nr|head" in /var/log produced some strange error about too many flags/arguments being used for the sudo shell, but had no issues running it with csh. Also, no other directory gave the same error in /var.

mrmazda · 08-09-2017, 11:54 PM

Are you using a file manager that "deletes" by moving to a Trash folder?

AwesomeMachine · 08-10-2017, 12:13 AM

I'm a bit surprised /var/tmp had so much in it, and that it even affected then total, because it's tempfs, which is in memory, not on disk. When you compressed the files, did you delete the source files? Is /var on a separate partition from root? If it isn't, moving things from /var / doesn't have any effect on disk usage.

You shouldn't need sudo for du. You might try the du flags individually instead of combined with a single dash.

businesscat · 08-10-2017, 02:45 AM

actually, I think,you move the files on the same filesystem.

Try to move to another mount point.

Could you paste a df -h output?

Robbot · 08-10-2017, 11:03 PM

I'm using the CLI. Yes, / and /var have their own mounts. I used gzip on the compressed files. Maybe it has something to do with that error I'm getting only from /var/log? I ran du as root as I was getting permission denied on several of the folders/files from /var/log. I can't really post the output as this is in a secured virtual environment. I forgot to mention also that compressing some other files caused the usage to increase.

JJJCR · 08-11-2017, 12:12 AM

check out this link it might help, maybe temp files not getting cleared.
https://serverfault.com/questions/37...mp-get-cleared

Text below from above link:

Quote:

On Debian-like systems: on boot (the rules are defined in /etc/default/rcS).
On RedHat-like systems: by age (RHEL6 it was /etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch ;
RHEL7 and RedHat-like with systemd it's configured in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf, called by systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service).
On Gentoo /etc/conf.d/bootmisc.

Robbot · 08-11-2017, 11:39 PM

Thank you. I'm working from Suse 11 I believe. I double checked that error from /var/log and it says

"du: unable to execute with specified paramters on sudo bash"

which I could not find anything online for

Robbot · 08-14-2017, 05:30 PM

I'm going to mark this as solved. I checked on it after the weekend, and it's suddenly down to 70%. Nothing else was removed and the server wasn't bounced. No idea what did it :-/