problem: files removed from the bin but no space gained

[utonto]

i have a tragical problem:
i wanted to delete 2 big files so i went in the file manager , clicked with the right button of the mouse on the files and then pressed delete. when it said to me that the files were too big for the bin i clicked on directly remove the files.
the problem is that i gained no space from removing those files.
before i had about 56 mb of left space and now its exactly the same!!! please i neeed help
thanks
p.s. sorry for my poor english

 

[utonto]

any help?

 

[Duncan_Rowland]

Are you on XP or Linpus?
Have you tried emptying the trash anyway?
Can you get to the directory via a command prompt?
If so, what does dir/ls show for that directory?
and can you remove the file via command prompt? (del/rm)

 

[utonto]

Are you on XP or Linpus?

i'm on limpus.

Have you tried emptying the trash anyway?

yes, but no change

Can you get to the directory via a command prompt?
If so, what does dir/ls show for that directory?
and can you remove the file via command prompt? (del/rm)

unfortunately i can't remember what was the folder of the files.

i have always used windows xp. isn't there a search function in order to discover where are the files now?
(i have tried the search option of thunar but i have pressed canc button on the files found by it and so when i repeat the search it is not able to find the file again!!!! :x )

 

[Duncan_Rowland]

Can you remember the filename (or part of it)?
If so, you can locate it with...
sudo find / -name your_filename_goes_here
or, if you can only remember a bit, you can use wildcards
sudo find / -name *filename*

 

[utonto]

Can you remember the filename (or part of it)?

yes, sure

sudo find / -name your_filename_goes_here
or, if you can only remember a bit, you can use wildcards
sudo find / -name *filename*

none seems to work. it just don't want to find the file.
it seems like the files are no more in the hard disk but i know that this is not true!! :x
thanks for your help... any other idea?

 

[Duncan_Rowland]

If you type:
sudo du -a / | sort -nr | more
This will list all files (including directory total) and their sizes sorted starting with the largest.
Press the spacebar to see subsequent pages and ctrl+c to stop.
Perhaps you can spot the locaton of the extra big files here?
also - you can see the percentage use of your disk (/dev/sda1) by typing
df
finally, you could try booting a live distro from a USB stick and running fsck to make sure there is not corruption of your file system.

 

[utonto]

this is what the terminal shows when i type the commands you have suggest
i have marked with red colour the fact that it shows 2 different values... is it normal?

[user@localhost home]$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 6720248 5570124 808748 88% /
none 252364 0 252364 0% /dev/shm
none 6720248 5570124 808748 88% /mnt/home
[user@localhost home]$ sudo su
audit_log_user_command(): Connection refused
[root@localhost home]# sudo du -a / | sort -nr | more
audit_log_user_command(): Connection refused
du: cannot access `/proc/11013/task/11013/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/11013/task/11013/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/11013/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/11013/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
5084672 /
2410364 /usr
1302720 /usr/lib
1079388 /mnt
1077548 /home
--More--

 

[Duncan_Rowland]

hmm.. I'm not sure. I removed fuse from my setup, so my mounts are not quite the same...
On my machine, there is a difference but nowhere near as big as the one from your disk...

[Duncan@localhost ~]$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 6720248 4817104 1561768 76% /

[Duncan@localhost ~]$ sudo du -a / | sort -nr | head -1
4814468 /

So I have a difference of:
4817104-4814468 = 2636
Whereas yours is:
5570124-5084672 = 485452

I don't really understand why this would be. But perhaps if you run fsck on your disk it could fix it?
The easiest way to do this I think is to boot a live distro from a USB pendrive...

 

[Duncan_Rowland]

hmm.. I just booted my own Aspire One from usb (backtrack3) and ran fsck,
this has reduced the discrepancy to only 88 (as below),
so perhaps there is indeed something corrupt on your disk that needs fixing to get the space back...

[Duncan@localhost ~]$ sudo du -a / | sort -nr | head -1
du: cannot access `/proc/2967/task/2967/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/2967/task/2967/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/2967/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/2967/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
4814488 /
[Duncan@localhost ~]$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 6720248 4814400 1564472 76% /
none 252364 0 252364 0% /dev/shm

 

[utonto]

how exactly works fsck?
i booted the aspire one with a usb device
then i opened the terminal, umounted the hd, and then tried with this command: fsck dev/sda1
after that it told me that the system is clean.

is that the way to do it?

 

[Duncan_Rowland]

Nearly there I think. You can't check a mounted partition (which is why you can't check when running from linpus).
So you need to unmount the partition you want to check (you can check which this is using df, for me it's hdc1not sda1)
So I do
umount /dev/hdc1
and then
fsck /dev/hdc1
(and I press "y" when it asks me to fix anything, but I think the -y flag requests not to prompt for this)
p.s. I've assumed you don't have an SD card or USB stick inserted when you've run "sudo du...",
as this could cause the discrepancies with the sizes seen with df... (i.e. du sums all file systems together).

 

[utonto]

Nearly there I think. You can't check a mounted partition (which is why you can't check when running from linpus).
So you need to unmount the partition you want to check (you can check which this is using df, for me it's hdc1not sda1)
So I do
umount /dev/hdc1
and then
fsck /dev/hdc1

ok so i've done it correctly

p.s. I've assumed you don't have an SD card or USB stick inserted when you've run "sudo du...",
as this could cause the discrepancies with the sizes seen with df... (i.e. du sums all file systems together).

you have assumed well

 

[Duncan_Rowland]

Hi utonto,
sorry, I don't know how to help further... perhaps others have ideas?
The files are not present,
The file system is fine,
Sounds like everything should be ok... Are you sure the disk space is still "missing"?
...The 56mb you originally had, is not the same as the 12% now free (from your df)
So, perhaps it's fine now? (the du discrepancy might just be from the differing mounts?)
Best -Duncan.

 

[utonto]

...The 56mb you originally had, is not the same as the 12% now free (from your df)

i have deleted some other files from my hard disk because it was not possible to use the pc with only 56 mb of free space.
the thing is that i never managed to regain the space occupied by those famous files.
i hope someone will have ideas.

if not one day or the other i will format the whole aspire one.

 

[utonto]

finally something happened!
for a fortunate case there was a trouble with the plug where the aspire was plugged in. so it crashed down.
i restarted the aspire and finally i regain more than 1.5 gb of free space.
it seems like the crash has reset the hard disk

 

[fweigel]

Ok, your disk is full...

Try "sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/sda1" to display the file system details. "df -h", of course, to display the free-space.

And, now for the fun part. A certain percentage (5% or so) of the disk is reserved for use by root. This is the cause of discrepancies in "dh" output. There is also a "maximum mount count", after which a "fsck" (file system check) is forced. By default (on the 120GB hard disk version), the maximum mount count is set to 26.

The maximum mount count and the reserved percentage can be adjusted:

sudo tune2fs -m reserved_blocks_percent /dev/sda1
sudo tune2fs -c max_mounts_count /dev/sda1

Use 0 to disable.