[Novalug] MORE on full root partition problem

[Jon LaBadie]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 11:37:11PM -0400, Roger W. Broseus wrote:
> Tom: Thanks for thinking on this. The problem is not in /var or /mail files.
> 
> It's in    /proc!

Unless there is something very different about your system
than mine, it is NOT /proc.

/proc is a virtual, or pseudo file system.
It takes no physical disk space.

Follow Peter's suggestion, as root run du -sh (or -sm) /*.
After finding out which tree, perhaps /tmp or /var for
example, go into that directory and rerun the command
as du -s{h,m} *  (no / this time).  You should quickly
be able to determing where the space is being consumed.

> 
> /proc has a hugh number of folders named sequentially 1 thru 7, 16, 27,
> 28,5 in the 100s, 8 in the 1900s, . . . 94 folders with similar sequeces,
> ending with 10 in the 8037 to 8564 range. Some, but not all of these have
> replications of my /home and other folders - in a folder named "root!"

Those represent the processes running on your system.  ps -e should
show the same list of numbers.  You can get a lot of info about a
process by looking into /proc/<its process id>

> Also in /proc are
>   /acpi, /asound, . . . /syvipc, /tty and a few odd files. I assume these
> are "normal."

Yup

> 
> A common trait of all of these folders is that they contain folders named
> attr, cwd, fd, fdinfo, task and include files with names like auxv,
> clear_refs, cmdline, . . . stat, statm, status, wchan.

The Current Working Directory of the process,
its open File Descriptors, etc.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon at jgcomp.com
 JG Computing
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 Reston, VA  20194		(703) 787-0922 (fax)