Disk & Filesystem Management (Du/Df/Lsblk/Fstrim)
Stop trusting df when files are lurking in deleted state
🧩 The Challenge
You look at df and see the disk is 99% full, but running du on the directories shows way less data usage. It’s infuriating because you know the space is occupied but you can’t find the massive file eating it up.
đź’ˇ The Fix
Use lsof to spot those ghost files that are still held open by a process even though they’ve been unlinked. This is the only way to find what’s actually keeping your disk space hostage after a botched log rotation.
lsof +L1⚙️ Why It Works
Passing the +L1 flag tells the tool to list all open files with a link count of less than one, which are exactly the files that won’t release their blocks until the holding process dies.
🚀 Pro-Tip: Once you find the PID holding the file, don’t kill the process; just restart the service so it starts writing to a fresh log file.
Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 9/10/2026