this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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partition mounted at /home is 250+ GB, but all apps and fs analyzers running on /home say it is only 62 GB "apparent size". Any ideas before I nuke the partition? (feddit.nl)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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  • Pop!_OS 22.04
  • on a 500GB SATA SSD
  • separate partitions with ext4 fs for the root and /home partitions.

I have Googled a lot, resized the home partition and filesystem a few times (from a liveboot USB) and run various analyzers but the problem persists.

Some output:

pop-os@pop-os:/media/pop-os$ sudo resize2fs /dev/sda3
resize2fs 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
Please run 'e2fsck -f /dev/sda3' first.

pop-os@pop-os:/media/pop-os$ cd a358cafe-a2a3-46a4-ba33-0a82e88fb157/ && sudo ncdu || cd ../
pop-os@pop-os:/media/pop-os$ sudo lsblk /dev/sda3 -o size
 SIZE
 271G
pop-os@pop-os:/media/pop-os$ sudo e2fsck /dev/sda3
e2fsck 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
/dev/sda3: clean, 264256/17768448 files, 8195768/71048094 blocks
pop-os@pop-os:/media/pop-os$ df -h --out=size a358cafe-a2a3-46a4-ba33-0a82e88fb157/
 Size
 266G

ncdu, du show 62 GB and Steam says similarly that there is no space to install games.

When I resize the partition and filesystem, it does show less remaining size. Resizing back to 290 GB, the max is still ~62 GB total apparent space.

Any ideas before I nuke the partition and move my data into a fresh one?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If a mountpoint wasn't an empty directory before mounting another filesystem on it, the contents of that mountpoint will be shadowed by the contents of the other filesystem. So, if you mount other filesystems onto the one in question, this could cause your discrepancy, since the files are still there, just not present in the virtual filesystem tree. It's a common practice to set your mointpoints to immutable after creating them for this reason.

Somewhat more uncommonly, ext[234] allow the administrator to reserve a number of blocks for use by, in most cases, root — maybe you tune2fs'd your filesystem with some crazy value?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you so much for your helpful response! 💜

If I understand you correctly, then my applications would be looking at the /home folder on the root filesystem, which is <100 GB, unable to see the larger partition mounted in /home underneath it. I can check by mounting the root fs but not the home partition from a live iso and checking for a /home in the contents of the root fs.

If I find what I expect there, the following should fix it:

  • move the files out of the /home folder to a backup location
  • delete /home folder in root fs
  • move files to large partition to be mounted in /home

Only thing I might have to check if it does not work is if this /home mount will then happen on booting the actual OS.

The second scenario does not ring a bell, but I'll keep it in mind in case this does not work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would unmount /home and verify that the directory is empty.

On a unrelated note I have been using btrfs with subvolumes and it works pretty well

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately, /home/myusername really does live on the big partition. When I mount root only (from the live ISO, mountedroot/home is empty @[email protected] @[email protected]

I give up. I am nuking this partition and in the process hopefully resetting what is wrong with it, then dropping the 30GB of files back in from the backup.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's probably the right answer