Systemdrive free space low

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Level 2

215 points

Systemdrive free space low

Hi Everybody,

We have a server (dual 2.3GHz PPC 2G RAM) with 3 80G HDs. 2 are RAIDed together for user home directories and the 3rd is the system drive. Nothing is on it but OS X 10.4.11 Server. Yet there is only 7% free space reported in the Finder. The server serves a 25 seat graphic design lab with about 100 users in the WGM. The format is Mac OS X extended (journaled). The disk passes verfication with disk utility, and permissions check out OK too. All visible folders on system drive add up to less than 20G.

What's going on here?

TIA,

David

G5, Mac OS X (10.4.1)

Posted on Nov 30, 2008 6:01 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

MrHoffman

Community+ 2024

Level 10

116,475 points

Nov 30, 2008 7:35 AM in response to David Levine3

Your use of the word folder implies use of Finder to investigate the contents of the system disk.

If that's the case, realize that Finder deliberately cannot view the operating system directories and related files. There's a whole lot more on a Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server disk than is visible with Finder.

If you did investigate what's on the disk with Terminal.app and the shell, ignore this.

The bash ls -Ral / command can be used to view everything.

The bash find command has a size selector, and a pass from the root directory can be used to locate larger files. You may well have a log file that's filling the disk (see what's in it before you delete it) or an accumulation of coredump (crash) files other activities going on in the background that are filling the disk.

Regardless, I'd look to move to additional and to larger disks. One hundred users performing graphic design on (effectively) two 80 GB drives seems rather tight, regardless.

And before you start deleting stuff, make certain you have a disk image or other restorable archive copy of the disk you're working on.

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Answer 2

Nov 30, 2008 10:30 AM in response to David Levine3

Hi

From the command line issue:

sudo du -cxhd 1 /

Will list total sizes for all directories visible and invisible. It should give you an indication of where the space is being taken up? I'm guessing a runaway log in /var/log or if you are using the server's Print Service undeleted print jobs stuck in /var/spool/cups or even left over updates in /usr/share/swupd?

Be patient with the command as it can take some time to fully display its results.

Tony

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Answer 3

David Levine3 Author

Level 2

215 points

Nov 30, 2008 1:31 PM in response to Antonio Rocco

Thanks MrHoffman and Tony,

Yes, I was using the Finder, not being very schooled in Unix commands. I did use the Go to Folder to peek into the /private, but found no giant log files. I will try what you've suggested when I get back to work tomorrow. I was VNC'd to the server but that's been locking up on me lately. We've definitely outgrown this server, but we don't have the funds to expand just yet, so we impose 1G space quotas on the students.

I'll post what I find here. Thanks again for the speedy responses.

David

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Answer 4

David Levine3 Author

Level 2

215 points

Dec 1, 2008 6:06 AM in response to David Levine3

Hi Folks,

Here's what Tony's command (du -cxhd 1 / (logged in as root)) revealed:

Last login: Mon Dec 1 08:36:44 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
cscgdserver:~ root# du -cxhd 1 /
9.4M /.Spotlight-V100
12K /.svn
0B /.Trashes
512B /.vol
478M /Applications
1.0K /automount
3.5M /bin
0B /cores
512B /dev
0B /Groups
16G /Library
512B /Network
21M /opt
369M /private
2.2M /sbin
31M /Shared Items
1.2G /System
13M /Users
583M /usr
51G /Volumes
70G /
70G total
cscgdserver:~ root#

I've figured out that the Library directory is large because of a few image files that we used with NetBoot to clone the lab workstations. I can move those image files off to a NAS drive which will gain some space.

But what's with /Volumes? It looks like I somehow made an erroneous copy of the student home folders from the RAID pair. Or is /Volumes used for caching? Maybe I did this when I was trying to set up the new NAS disk and make backups? I feel extremely stupid 😟

Thanks again for your help.

David

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Answer 5

Dec 1, 2008 7:05 AM in response to David Levine3

See what

ls -al /Volumes
ls -al /

shows. Or post up the results, if you're unsure.

The former usually has the links to the volumes and (at least locally, non-netboot box) not much else.

The latter (the root) likely has dozen or two files with a handful of big files associated with the Mac OS X kernel and with caching.

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Answer 6

Dec 1, 2008 8:42 AM in response to David Levine3

I've seen problems before where a machine has created a ghost copy of an external drive in /Volumes.

Try

ls -lah /Volumes

and then

du -sh /Volumes/*

and post back the results.

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Answer 7

David Levine3 Author

Level 2

215 points

Dec 2, 2008 8:30 AM in response to David Levine3

Hi Folks,

Thanks again for the assistance. I decided that I screwed up and somehow misguided one of the LaCie backup utilities that came with the NAS drive to copy to the wrong location. Other than my accidental 51G folder the only other objects in /Volumes were aliases to other volumes.

I went ahead and deleted the accidental backup once confirming that it existed elsewhere. The system drive now has plenty of free space!

Cheers,

David

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