Directory Size problem

[Joe Smith]

Dan Track wrote:
> ...
> [root at diamond root]#    df
> Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda1              1035660    476164    506888  49% /
> /dev/sdb1             17140848  11505004   4765124  71% /opt
> none                    513960         0    513960   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/sda2              3099292    979196   1962660  34% /usr
> 
> [root at diamond root]#    ls -laRib /var/spool/mqueue
> /var/spool/mqueue:
> total 3724384
>  15374 drwxr-xr-x    2 root     mail       311296 Dec  4 12:46 .
>  43877 drwxr-xr-x   11 root     root         4096 Jul 13 13:33 ..
> [root at diamond root]#    du /var/spool/mqueue
> 3724380 /var/spool/mqueue

I don't see any way with these numbers that /var/spool/mqueue can really 
be 3.7G.

First off, df says the whole root file system is only 1G (with ~0.5G 
used). How can mqueue be 3.7G?

Second, even though directories don't release their disk space when they 
shrink, I'd be very surprised if the actual size was 3.7G. If every 
filename were the max of 255 characters, you'd need almost 15 million 
files to account for a 3.7G directory.

And as you said originally, du and ls disagree about the size.

All this would make me want to be sure there's no problem with the 
filesystem.

Have you run a full fsck on the partition lately? If not (and I believe 
the default for ext3 partitions is to never run a full fsck unless you 
ask for it), you can use something like shutdown -rF (reboot, force 
fsck) to reboot and run one.

If fsck gives a clean bill of health, I'd just delete mqueue and 
re-create it with something like this:

# cd /var/spool
# rmdir mqueue
# install -d -m755 -oroot -gmail mqueue

<Joe