I have a Redhat 7.1 box that's configured as an Intranet server. It's working fine except for uploading some content.

Had a quick look, and a "df -h" reports that /var is full (236Mb), but by doing a "du -ah" on /var, I can only find 63Mb of files...

Any ideas what this could be? I've checked the fstab file, and nothing's being mounted to /var or anything...

Cheers.

Something must be boinked on your command you ran. I did the same exact commands against my /var and they came out reporting the same. Other than that though, df -h should be accurate and most likely your partition is filled. Try clearing out some log files. And you might want to consider moving your 'www' folder to another partition with more space if your only allocated 256 megs for it...

THIS IS most probably the problem as your install (default) does that ...I wondered always why and increased it myself ...

www is stored on /usr on this box, not /var so that shouldn't be a prob.

Also, if i search around under /var, I can only find enought stuff to add up to about 60Mb, like df reported...

Anything else I should look for? Got me stumped...!

What's the exact command your using with du and how are you adding this up? If you do a 'du -ah /var' it should tell you your total after listing all the files and directories in /var and all of its subdirectories.

I have never seen df -h give any inaccurate output in just about all the times I've ever used it. Remember also, most likely if your adding up the sizes yourself, which I would think would be alot of files, remember to add 4k for about every folder as well, etc.

Yep, that's the command I'm running (did start with "df -h /var" but then thought I'd try -ah incase it was hidden stuff taking up all the room).

It's only logs and mail (which is just mailed logfiles) on this partition, and that only adds up to about 60Mb (ignoring small crappy stuf, which is why i say "about" 60Mb). but the partition still looks full, which is causing the prob mentioned before, and also slows down things like logging in via ssh (I'm assuming that's 'cos it's trying to log it but can't...)

So that's what's confusing me so much!!

/var is mounted on it's own partition?

Just out of curiosity, if you have space elsewhere on the disk, why don't you try moving all the files you can see from /var to another partition, & then see what du and df show?

I deleted about 30Mb worth of old mailed logs from that partition, so that solved the problem for a while, except /var is now reporting that it's full again under df , and du reckons there's only 18Mb of files on that volume (which I think is correct). Where is all this space going??!

Was thinking about giving the server a reboot, but will that cause problems if it thinks /var is full? ...or similarly, should I just unmount /var and then remount it again?

Thanks...

The reboot will solve the problem. Sometimes after deleting the files, the space is not freed. On running ls, you can see no stuff. A reboot frees up all the space and du and df results match after that.

That's more like it!! 211Mb free on /var - as it should be!!

Cheers for that. But is there some way of forcing it to 'refresh' this info other than a reboot. Seems a shame as the box had been up for the best part of a year with no hassle....

I am not aware of any other method. I have seen this problem on sun boxes and a reboot fixes them.

You could possibly try to umount the partition/drive and then remount it. Not sure if that will fix the differences in free space, etc but might be the only way instead of a reboot.