Can somebody explain this? du & ls showing different sizes

[Vijay Gill]

> What do you mean "the problem went away"? Do you mean that the 512M
> files created under the new kernel now showed only a few bytes
> allocated, or do you mean that *new* files created under the *old*
> kernel don't have the 512M allocation?
>
> poc
>
> PS Your mailer is including the entire trailer of list messages in the
> quoted material. This is dumb and most mailers don't do it. You should
> either edit it out or consider using a different mailer.
>

By 'the problem went away' I meant that the files were no getting 512M
allocated for them even if they were a few bytes in size.

The trouble it was causing is explained in following text.

The files in question were in /var/log and /var/run. Most of them were
very small (ranging from 5-6 bytes to a few kilo bytes). But XFS
pre-allocated 512M to them. Once XFS pre-allocates space to a file,
the free space reported decreases by the amount that is pre-allocated
and not by the actual data written into the file. If these files are
closed then XFS would report free space left correctly. Since these
files were always open, my hard disk showed only a few megabytes free
even though it was supposed to have 3.1Gb free (as reported now).

I have a suspicion that there is another linux user facing similar
problem (he also ran out of space in /var as he said). He might be
running the latest kernel.

As far as my mailer is concerned I am using gmail (web interface). I
try to truncate the text as much as possible and keep text from only
previous mail so that the context is clear. It is as dumb as it is I
cannot help there.

I hope I have explained things properly.

Vijay