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We have a problem with /dev/sda1 partition memory issue.

It takes about one week to be filled in 99% without reason. To fix it we just need to reboot server and memory usage back to about 35%.

Total space at this partition is 9.9G.

Please advise,


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migrated from stackoverflow.com Feb 25 '10 at 23:14

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I think you're a little confused, /dev/sda1 is a partition on your hard drive, not RAM. Having said that, where is /dev/sda1 mounted, can you post the output of df -h in your question ? –  Dave Cheney Feb 25 '10 at 23:16

5 Answers 5

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You have a file that is being deleted, but not closed by the process that created it. Before you do a reboot, do the following as root:

lsof | grep deleted

You should find some file that is being deleted, but because the process that created it hasn't closed it, the space is still being used.

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+1: or /tmp is filling up and a init script empties it during startup. –  Trevor Harrison Feb 26 '10 at 16:36

Once it has filled, can you, from /, run the command du -h --max-depth=1 This will give you a listing by directory of where the space is being used. Then can you go into the folder which is taking up the most space (/var at a guess) and then do the same. You should be able to figure out where the space is going. I presume this is going to be logs/mail- depending on what the server role is.

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what's /dev/sda1 used for? If it's for /var or for '/' which holds /var, you might have logs overflowing, or mailboxes not being cleaned out

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Its used for /, thanks –  Marcin Feb 26 '10 at 11:48

We really need to see your partition table. But I conjure the reason that it's filling up is that you're writing tons of junk to /tmp and not cleaning it out, and /tmp is not on its own partition.

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you should also try the ps aux to see which is the program who eat a lot of your memory.

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