[SOLVED] Cannot find deleted .xsession-errors file

Hi friends, I am not an expert in SUSE/Linux. Hopefully by joining this community I could learn and share stuff with all members.

The problem I am having is that I experienced a full disk (0 % space available) of my mail server. After some researches I found out that a file named ".xsession-errors" has been growing very fast in the last few days (I check the disk space using df -h almost everyday to make sure disk space is sufficient). Just today the file size became 1.4TB! Growing from some hundreds of MB in the last few days. What I did was deleted the file using rm command, then the file was gone .... here is the problem; I checked the disk space helas the disk space still 0%. Tried to check whether the file was moved to Trash folder or tmp folder, but it's not there.

Another problem aroused now I cant do anything as the consequence of the disk full, I cant even restart the server.......but I still can FTP using WinSCP

Any advice would be highly appreciated.

if a file is opened by any process you cannot really remove it. The directory entry will be removed, but the file will be kept as long as the process uses. Probably you need to reboot or restart your GUI.

Are you saying reboot the server, am I right? Is it safe if I push the power button of the server, as I can't restart nor shutdown the server using shutdown command now. I worry it can't boot again. Right now I am transfering the mail folder (zimbra) to my laptop using WINSCP, which will take some times.

no, that is not safe at all.
You need to find the window/display manager (lightdm, gdm or kdm or ???) and restart it. Probably that is enough.

Hmmm, you mean logout from the current user (which is root), then back login?

if that was a graphical login, yes.

The screen doesnt show anything since an hour ago, just blank/black screen. I guess this is part of the problem. Is there a another way to restart the GUI

yes, as root you need to restart lightdm/kdm/gdm whatever dm you have.

at the moment I cant think of a solution why the screen suddenly becoming blank/black, which preventing me to do anything straight on the server...the only thing connecting me right now is the WINSCP for file transfer. If only I can kill the process of writing records to .xsession-errors file remotely, would it be a solution? (if so I don't know as well how to do it). I think even if that file has been deleted but as you say the process is still running.

most probably that is the X server itself. That's why you need to restart your X session (or kill the X server)

Hi Pan64, at last I did manage to get rid of the .xsession-errors deleted file thru PuTTY to access the mail server remotely. Once identified where the file was hiding, I just kill the process. That's it. Next step is to control in a daily basis the disk space size, I guess.....Thanks for your attention and help, Pan64.

next step is probably to read it, there should be something important in it if it was so big....