Ubuntu/Debian guest virtual drives 100% full when they're not; cannot reset free spac

[anubis]

Hi All,

I have a strange issue that's appeared in some (not all) of my Ubuntu/Debian guest OS's. This particular server experienced an improper shutdown as a result of an environmental issue and upon restarting the server, some of the Ubuntu/Debian guests were reporting the root drive to be 100% used.

After much checking and verifying, all other indications report the disk usage to be only around 15-20%.

The only way I've managed to get around the issue so far is to extend the partition (allocating more HDD space to the guest and then extending the guest's file system); but this still leaves the invalid space as 'used'.

Has anyone else encountered this issue before? If so, did you manage to rectify it?

Thanks
Anubis

 

[manu]

Re: Ubuntu/Debian guest virtual drives 100% full when they're not; cannot reset free

"this still leaves the invalid space as 'used' "

This is a bit unclear to me. Which Unix command are you using to get this information ?

 

[anubis]

Re: Ubuntu/Debian guest virtual drives 100% full when they're not; cannot reset free

Hi Manu,

Sorry, what I'm trying to say is that there is only a much smaller portion of 'properly' used space; the rest in "df -h" is showing as used, but when running "du / -ch" is comes up as:

user@svr001:~# du / -ch
~SNIP~
1.1G /
1.1G total

user@svr001:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs 39G 31G 5.6G 85% /
udev 10M 0 10M 0% /dev
tmpfs 202M 224K 202M 1% /run
/dev/disk/by-uuid/12e600c3-100b-4239-99cb-487e6ffdf97b 39G 31G 5.6G 85% /
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 679M 0 679M 0% /run/shm

Now, I know the above 'rootfs' does show some free space, but this is only after I've extended the partition as before it was:

rootfs 30GB 30GB 0GB 100% /

So even as it stands now, the actual files on rootfs are 1.1G but df is reporting it as 31G - where has the other ~30GB gone and how can I re-mark it as being free?

Thanks
Anubis.