[NTLUG:Discuss] disk space mystery

[Richard Cobbe]

Kevin Brannen wrote on 8-14-1999:

> Alton,
> 
> Thanks for trying to help, but I think you misread my post.  Please note
> the Used/Availble from my df command (and the output from fsck) which
> says I've *used* 830M, compared to the output from du and tar which says
> I've *used* 60M.  There's a 770M discrepency in usage.
> 
> I have rebooted several times, no change.  I fsck'ed using an alternate
> superblock and cleaned up a few "group" errors, but no change in space. 
> I'm now of the opinion that I've got a circular list of blocks
> (A->B->C->...Z->A) in there somehow that should be on my "free" list. 
> Short of reformating the partition, I'm not sure how to fix it.  Oh
> well, SuSE 6.2 should be here in a week or two I'm told, that'll be a
> good excuse and opportunity to fix it (via reformatting).

If you have such a cycle, fsck should have found it.

(Incidentally, I don't believe that the e2fs actually allows a circular
list of blocks, as is possible (I think) with the MSDOS FAT.  It is still
possible to create a cycle and thus shoot yourself in the foot, though; it
involves creating a hard link to a directory that's a direct ancestor of
the current one.)

Richard