Low disk space, problem deleting files
 

Hey everyone, I was running low on disk space (200meg free), so I deleted a few gigs of old stuff, and I am still showing 200meg free. I did clear the trash bin BTW. So, i tried deleting a few more things and watched it, but still no change. I rebooted, and now when I delete things, it works fine. I have 350megs free now, but those gigabytes i deleted earlier are still not showing up, and the files are no where to be found. It's like the FS dropped the file it self, but kept the inode or something (maybe vice-versa). Can anyone help me regain that lost space?

Two questoins:

How are you deleting the files.
What command are you using to report the free space?

The only way that you can delete files and not have the space freed up is if a) there is more than one hard link to a file. or b) A process has the file open. The reboot would have ruled out B, and usually files only have one hard link to them.

I'd have to suspect that you were deleting via the GUI and possibly deleted a symbolic link to the file instead of the original.

If you really suspect a filesystem error, init into single user mode and run fsck on your filesystems, but that was liikely done during the reboot and it would have reported the errors.