[H-GEN] Running low on disc space

Bruce Campbell bc at humbug.org.au
Thu Dec 19 04:05:57 EST 2002


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On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Ewan Edwards wrote:

> I was wondering where all my disc space went, so I ran "du -smx *" from the
> root directory and found that /proc was using up 898Mbyte.  That didn't seem
> right to me so I listed the contents (ls -la) and found the following file;
>
> -r--------    1 root     root     939528192 Dec 19 17:41 kcore
>
> >From what little I know about the /proc file system, this seems like a
> candidate for deleting.  Before I blow it away can anyone tell me if I'm
> right or wrong about that.

The 'proc' filesystem is a pseudo (not really there) filesystem, and
contains a representation of the system's memory structure in the 'kcore'
file (eg, 898Meg(-4K) is the size of your system's virtual memory (RAM +
swap) ), references to currently running processes (/proc/<number> where
<number> is a process ID), interesting information about your system and a
number of 'special' files which can be tweaked to change your system's
performance.

'man proc' will give you more information.

The physical space taken up by the /proc filesystem should be '0' under
normal circumstances; ie, when the 'proc' filesystem is mounted on /proc.
If you think that there are actual files residing in /proc (hidden by the
mount), try u(n)mounting it first, removing the directory, recreating the
directory, and remounting /proc .

--==--
Bruce.

[ Theres actually a reply to this caught up in non-member submission,
  however it doesn't shed that much light on the subject and isn't worth
  forwarding as is ]


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