/var with capacity -1%

[Peter Wemm]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 12:54 AM, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 09:17:03AM +0200, Ingeborg Hellemo wrote:
>  >
>  > eugen at kuzbass.ru said:
>  > > > It is possible to have files that are open and held by processes on
>  > > > the filesystem that are no longer listed. If you kill the offending
>  > L > process the space will be freed up.
>  > >
>  > > "lsof +aL1 <file_system>" shows unlinked open files on the specified file
>  > > system (quoting its man page).
>  >
>  >
>  > If you read my first mail you will see that this is not a case of overfull
>  > /var (101% used) and a need to free space. Something is wrong with either the
>  > filesystem or df(1) since it claims that I am using a negative amount of
>  > disk-blocks.
>  >
>  > There are no unlinked open files on /var, and I fail to understand how they
>  > could have explained the output of df(1)
>
>  Did you perform the lsof or fstat commands recommended?  We understand
>  you fail to understand how open fds to files which were removed could
>  cause what you're seeing -- you'll have to trust us.  Can you do that?

Was the file system on a machine that was upgraded from 4.x by any
chance?  There were some header changes a while ago that could cause
pervasive accounting problems.  A fsck fixes that one.

-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5
"If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete
themselves upon execution." -- Robert Sewell
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