rm doesn't free up space

[Robert Nichols]

Rick Stevens wrote:
> Earl wrote:
> 
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I'm running FC3 and ran out of disk space.
>>
>> After deleting a huge - and I mean approx 5Gb - worth of files, the df 
>> output still shows 0% free. None of these files were linked to other 
>> files. They should be well truly gone.
>>
>> Rebooting and forcing a fsck doesn't seem to have solved the problem.
> 
> 
> A reboot didn't solve it?  Generally that's an indication that some
> process has the file open.  Can you do an lsof on one of the (deleted)
> filenames to see if something has it open?

A running process that survives a reboot???  Neat trick!

If the filesystem got filled by a process running with root permissions,
then it also filled up the reserved space (5% by default).  Until you
free up more than that reserved space, 'df' will continue to show 0%
free.  On a large file system, 5GB could be less than 5% of the total.

-- 
Bob Nichols         rnichols42 at comcast.net