When df and du are contradictory

Published: Apr 17, 2015 · Tags: Linux Filesystems

I encountered a situation today where du reported a usage of 2.9M whereas df reported a occupation of 34G.

shell> df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1  40G  34G  3.5G   91% /var/log/httpd

shell> pwd; du -hs
/var/log/httpd
2.9M .

After some research I find out that df take into account currently open files, even if they have been deleted by another application in the meantime.

shell> lsof | grep "/var/log/httpd"
httpd.wor 30576 root 19w REG 8,33 6854529 48 /var/log/httpd/internetfr-error_log-20150403 (deleted)
# [troncated]

Reloading Apache HTTPd resolved the situation, as it closed deleted files’ descriptor.

shell> df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1  40G    3M 39.9G   1% /var/log/httpd
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