df reports false size

Felix E. Klee fk at linuxburg.de
Mon Jan 30 18:38:54 UTC 2006


On a customer's machine running SuSE 9.2, the size of the occupied space on  
the harddisk is reported incorrectly by "df -h".  After we noticed the 
problem, I rebooted the machine and had it checked by "e2fsck" (check forced 
with "tune2fs -C 40", we are not on location).  Right after the reboot I 
proceeded as follows, but I could not find any information about the cause, 
and the problem is still there - see below.  That the value reported by "du 
-shx" is close to the correct one was verified by copying the data to an 
identical partition on a second harddisk: On this disk "du" and "df" both 
reported a size of about 4 GB, and not 7.6G, which is completely off the 
mark.

# df -h /
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             7.6G  7.0G  216M  98% /
# du -shx /
4.2G    /
# find / -xdev | wc -l
161021
# tune2fs -l /dev/sda1
tune2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Filesystem UUID:          a3f40d6f-51be-448b-bf71-76292772fea0
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal filetype needs_recovery sparse_super
Default mount options:    (none)
Filesystem state:         clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              1005888
Block count:              2010125
Reserved block count:     100506
Free blocks:              155746
Free inodes:              744793
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
Fragment size:            4096
Blocks per group:         32768
Fragments per group:      32768
Inodes per group:         16224
Inode blocks per group:   507
Filesystem created:       Sat Nov  5 19:00:05 2005
Last mount time:          Mon Jan 30 13:28:19 2006
Last write time:          Mon Jan 30 13:28:19 2006
Mount count:              1
Maximum mount count:      39
Last checked:             Mon Jan 30 13:28:19 2006
Check interval:           15552000 (6 months)
Next check after:         Sat Jul 29 14:28:19 2006
Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)
First inode:              11
Inode size:               128
Journal inode:            8
First orphan inode:       357173
Default directory hash:   tea
Directory Hash Seed:      59ce6d12-990c-40ad-8268-212ae9bb8291
Journal backup:           inode blocks

Later we also tried out the following commands - apparently sparse files or 
unlinked files are not to blame:

# lsof -s | grep deleted
isam       6354   david    0r      REG        8,1         55     
357173 /tmp/sh-thd-1138650835 (deleted)
vmware-vm 15452    arzt   48u      REG        8,1   11948032     
357177 /tmp/ram0 (deleted)
# df --sync -h /
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             7.6G  7.0G  212M  98% /
# du -shx --apparent-size /
3.9G    .

Any idea what may be the cause of the problem?

-- 
Dipl.-Phys. Felix E. Klee
Email: fk at linuxburg.de (work), felix.klee at inka.de (home)
Tel: +49 721 8307937, Fax: +49 721 8307936
Linuxburg, Goethestr. 15A, 76135 Karlsruhe, Germany




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