SUMMARY: /var size not real

["Hisham Al Saad" <ahisham@batelco.com.bh>]

Many thanks to all who offered their contribution on this subject, too many
to list here :)
Although I have rebooted the system before posting my questing to the list
and it did not solve the problem.
A second time reboot, /var partition reclaimed its size and showed the
correct percentage 83%.

Valuable information which summarize most of other responses I received from
great members of this list.
------------------------------------------
Try running lsof on /var.  It's possible to remove a file even though
another process has it opened for reading or writing.  When this happens,
the OS removes the file's directory entry but retains its file handle.  In
effect, you have an invisible file taking up space on your partition until
the process is killed.  Lsof (or fuser or a search through the PID
directories in /proc) will give you a list of open files on a partition.
---------------------------------
it sounds like your inode table is full.  I have seen this same behavior on
Solaris and HP/UX systems and this was the
cause.
To see if indeed your inode table is full, type the following command:
#  df -i
This will give you the total number of inodes per filesystem, inodes
used, inodes free and percentage of inodes used.

Take a look at http://linuxperf.nl.linux.org/general/kerneltuning.html
for ideas on how to increase the inode limit for the filesystem.
---------------------------------------
An open file that is removed won't actually be removed
until it is closed, although it will disappear from the directory. A
reboot is a clumsy way to force them closed, a more graceful way would be
a command like this:

fuser -mu /var

...which will show all processes with open files on that partition. Kill
or restart them and the space will be reclaimed.
-------------------------------------


My original message-

> > Hello,
> > I'm having a strange problem on my Compaq server running RedHat 7.1 on
the
> > /var 8GB size partition. Suddenly,It always show 100% use.
> > Although I have removed big files of the partition, it still shows the
100%
> > use 0 Available.
> > Anyone has a clue what's going on please. The reported available size by
the
> > system is not true.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Hisham
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