[vox-tech] Mysteriously Expanding Home Directory

[Charles Polisher]

> On Saturday 18 May 2002 11:59 pm, Richard Crawford wrote:
> > messages from my mailspool because my device was full.  Confused, I ran
> > df -h and found that /home was full to capacity, at 100%.  I deleted
> > some software and removed a couple of old user directories, and had the
> > /home directory at 96%.  Then I went to watch a movie, and when I came
> > back, /home was back up at 100%.

Hopefully I haven't misread your posting: did you look for one
or more _big_ files in /home ? One method of looking for these:

	du -ks * | sort -nr

displays a list of the directories / files from the current 
path, with the total disk used in kilobytes. For example,
starting from /usr, my host shows:

	1197724 local
	1149048 src
	1028184 share
	776124  lib
	276828  X11R6
	168252  bin
	52592   MuPAD
	39840   sbin
	29288   include
	168     man
	4       etc
	0       tmp

It's clear from this list that 'local' and 'src' have
the most disk usage. Move to the next level down:

	cd local

and re-run "du -ks * | sort -nr" :

	756388  src
	208676  bin
	34344   gcc3
	29576   crystal
	6636    httpd
	1076    doc
	960     share
	72      man
	28      num
	16      lib
	4       sbin
	4       info
	4       include
	4       etc

and so on, until the listing is of _files_, and
there you should have an inkling of what is
soaking up all your disk space. In your case, 

	cd /home
	du -ks * |sort -nr

Be cautious about blowing away or truncating any
files or directories if you're not sure of their
function.

Happy hunting!

-- 
Charles Polisher
Amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the titanic.