df showing 28G of total space, du showing size of '/' as 400+ G

Question

I constantly get the unable to write to * error, even though I cleaned up a bunch of space.

df thinks my disk is 28G in size and 100% full after I deleted a lot of unused files:

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1        28G   28G     0 100% /

The total size of / is now:

$ sudo du -hs /
484G    /

And here's my physical system info:

$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)

$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA ST1000DM003-1CH1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  30.0GB  30.0GB  primary   ext4            boot
 2      30.0GB  100GB   70.0GB  primary   ext4
 3      100GB   999GB   899GB   extended
 5      100GB   999GB   899GB   logical   ext4
 4      999GB   1000GB  1285MB  primary   linux-swap(v1)

Update:

The issue was a runaway log file that filled up /dev/sda1. I suppose that what caused df to not show stats for anything other than /dev/sda1 is the fact that they weren't mounted (as output of mount shows above. As to why that happened I have no idea, but after freeing some space and restart, the system was able to mount everything properly.

You do realise that du works across filesystem mounts don't you? so du / counts partition 1,2 & 5 assuming they are all mounted. — hookenz, Jul 11 '14 at 01:47
Did you mean to include the `-x` options in your du command perhaps? — Zoredache, Jul 11 '14 at 02:16
Look over on the right under Related - you'll find the answer to your questions there. — user9517, Jul 11 '14 at 06:01

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 11 '14 at 05:52

0

If you're having a hard time visualizing this, and aren't quite sure what's in your directory tree, try downloading and using the ncdu utility using apt-get.

answered Jul 11 '14 at 05:52

ewwhite

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 11 '14 at 07:09

can't add comments yet, but as @Matt wrote - the issue is with limited space on / which acts as both / and /boot in single fs.
The correct way is probably to separate into 2 filesystems, and mount /boot on /, but that ship has sailed (it would be easier to just reinstall the system, for @Goro ).
without showing us mount and /etc/fstab, hard to tell the mount hierarchy. possibly autofs is involved too...
if you want to see which dirs hold the most space, do

sudo du -sh /* | sort -h

and ignore /proc /dev /sys as they are all virtual namespaces (they don't take any actual disk space)

repeat the above du for the largest dir to track down the space hoggers etc.

df showing 28G of total space, du showing size of '/' as 400+ G

2 Answers2