Dealing with Doppelganger Folders in /Volumes

On Jun 10, 2008, at 12:59 PM, Potter at Island Resources wrote:

> When I first read Adam's description of the /Volume problems he had
> last month, I thought I was seeing the answer to my own
> "disappearance" of 55+ gigabytes of DISK SPACE (not disappeared
> FILES, rather, the space is not available on my MacBook Black with
> OS 10.5.3).

Maybe you can tease it out from Terminal.

The `du` command ("disk usage") is the best starting point:

     sudo -du -sch /* /.*

After entering your admin password, that should generate a little
report indicating how big each top-level folder are, including folders
hidden from the Finder and even ones normally hidden from the command
line.

Chances are, it's going to tell you that one of the folders is roughly
55GB. Let's assume it's /private, as that's one that Finder & Disk
Inventory X can't see, and occasionally it gets huge. You can drill
down a level to see what folder under there is the big one:

     sudo -du -sch /private/*

At a guess, I'm guessing you might have one or more big log files in /
private/var/log, or *maybe* some stray virtual memory files under /
private/var/vm.

I would *not* delete anything under /private before running it by
someone, as there are some absolutely essential files in there that
will prevent the system from booting & running properly if they are
missing or damaged. If you want, paste the output from the `du`
commands in an email and I can try to help in more detail.


--
Chris Devers

On 11/06/2008 8:07 AM, "Chris Devers" <cdeverspobox.com> spake thus:

> sudo -du -sch /* /.*

Of course, that should be:
   
    sudo du -sch /* /.*

(no "-" before the "du")

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On 11/06/2008 8:07 AM, "Chris Devers" <cdeverspobox.com> spake thus:

> sudo -du -sch /* /.*

Note also that you should unmount any network volumes before you do this,
otherwise it'll scan those as well (taking a LOT longer than necessary, and
probably spewing permission warnings along the way if it's a shared volume).

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On Jun 11, 2008, at 1:40 PM, Nigel Stanger wrote:

> On 11/06/2008 8:07 AM, "Chris Devers" <cdeverspobox.com> spake thus:
>
>> sudo -du -sch /* /.*
>
> Of course, that should be:
>
> sudo du -sch /* /.*
>
> (no "-" before the "du")

And I worry about the /.* part, although at least we're talking
about /, so .. is the same thing as . That may bail the command out
(or not). I know I get messed up regularly by .. being matched by .*

   --John (deliberately not putting a trailing period on the final
sentence)

sudo du -xkcd9 / | sort -rn | top -100

will show the largest 100
in decreasing order
to a directory/folder depth of 9
on the boot volume only, skipping any other volumes
no mater where located (hidden, root-accessible, whatever)

You may recognize the xkcd in there; apparently no relation to
http://xkcd.com/; just coincidence... :)

On 16Jun2008, at 00:50, Marc Farnum Rendino wrote:

> sudo du -xkcd9 / | sort -rn | top -100
>
> will show the largest 100
> in decreasing order
> to a directory/folder depth of 9
> on the boot volume only, skipping any other volumes
> no mater where located (hidden, root-accessible, whatever)

did you perhaps mean:

sudo du -xkcd9 / | sort -rn | head -n 100

--Ron

--
Ron Risley
www.risley.net

he, funny that it has become the norm that noone actually tests their
own CLI-stuff before posting. This should work better:

sudo du -xkcd9 / | sort -rn | head -100

There is no such thing as top -100...

Best regards,

Kim

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 6:32 PM, Ron Risley <ronrisley.net> wrote:
> did you perhaps mean:
>
> sudo du -xkcd9 / | sort -rn | head -n 100

Good catch; thanks! :)

- Marc

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 6:32 PM, Kim Gammelgård <kganimac.com> wrote:
> he, funny that it has become the norm that noone actually tests their
> own CLI-stuff before posting.

Or you test it - and then add just one more thing. :)

You both have points:

On 27-Jun-08, at 5:48 AM, Marc Farnum Rendino wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 6:32 PM, Kim Gammelgård <kganimac.com> wrote:
>> he, funny that it has become the norm that noone actually tests their
>> own CLI-stuff before posting.
>
> Or you test it - and then add just one more thing. :)

A sliding scale of certainty; authority and UTILITY would be an
immense time saver. Perhaps improvements on YMMV already exist ?

ABBTTT = Back-up before trying this trick would at least be of high
utility: in the rare case of it being followed.

JaP = Just a possibility

ITT25 = I've (personally) tried this 25 times

xyz HTTx = Joe / Jill xyz has tried this x times.

SPabc = Standard Practice abc...

George