I think I need a little help here... I have a RedHat 7.2 server here, and I think I'm pretty proficient with it, however, this one thing keeps bugging me....

For some reason, I ran out of space on the root partition of this machine. I had set it to 1.2Gb which should be plenty for the OS itself, and I have separate partitions for /home and /var/log... Well, I went in and removed some packages completely that I know were of large size (I had Netscape browser and Mozilla installed).. When I removed these packages, the executables and associated files were gone, but doing a "df -h" was showed the exact same information as it did before this happened...

So, I rebooted, and low-and-behold, doing a "df -h" showed a significant difference in space available on the root partition... So, I decided to test a theory.. Below is a log... Note the sizes on the root filesystem...

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[root@pcclvw1 /]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 1.2G 593M 528M 53% /
/dev/sda5 15G 7.3G 6.8G 52% /home
none 313M 0 313M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda3 251M 8.8M 228M 4% /var/log
[root@pcclvw1 /]# rpm -e gnome-libs-1.2.13-16
error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
gnome-libs is needed by libglade-0.16-4
gnome-libs is needed by pygnome-1.4.1-3
libart_lgpl.so.2 is needed by libglade-0.16-4
libart_lgpl.so.2 is needed by pygnome-1.4.1-3
libart_lgpl.so.2 is needed by pygnome-libglade-1.4.1-3
libart_lgpl.so.2 is needed by dateconfig-0.7.4-6
libart_lgpl.so.2 is needed by locale_config-0.3.2-1
libgnome.so.32 is needed by libglade-0.16-4
libgnome.so.32 is needed by pygnome-1.4.1-3
libgnome.so.32 is needed by pygnome-libglade-1.4.1-3
libgnome.so.32 is needed by dateconfig-0.7.4-6
libgnome.so.32 is needed by locale_config-0.3.2-1
libgnomesupport.so.0 is needed by libglade-0.16-4
libgnomesupport.so.0 is needed by pygnome-1.4.1-3
libgnomesupport.so.0 is needed by pygnome-libglade-1.4.1-3
libgnomesupport.so.0 is needed by dateconfig-0.7.4-6
libgnomesupport.so.0 is needed by locale_config-0.3.2-1
libgnomeui.so.32 is needed by libglade-0.16-4
libgnomeui.so.32 is needed by pygnome-1.4.1-3
libgnomeui.so.32 is needed by pygnome-libglade-1.4.1-3
libgnomeui.so.32 is needed by dateconfig-0.7.4-6
libgnomeui.so.32 is needed by locale_config-0.3.2-1
libgtkxmhtml.so.1 is needed by pygnome-1.4.1-3
libzvt.so.2 is needed by pygnome-1.4.1-3
[root@pcclvw1 /]# rpm -e gnome-libs-1.2.13-16 pygnome-1.4.1-3 dateconfig-0.7.4-6 locale_config-0.3.2-1 pygnome-libglade-1.4.1-3 libglade-0.16-4
error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
libglade.so.0 is needed by pygtk-libglade-0.6.8-3
pygnome is needed by ksconfig-1.9.8-4
pygnome is needed by printconf-gui-0.3.44-1
pygnome is needed by redhat-config-users-0.9.2-6
pygnome >= 1.4.0 is needed by serviceconf-0.6.6-1
pygnome is needed by rhn_register-gnome-2.7.2-7.x.2
pygnome is needed by up2date-gnome-2.7.2-7.x.6
pygnome-libglade is needed by hwbrowser-0.3.5-2
pygnome-libglade is needed by ksconfig-1.9.8-4
pygnome-libglade is needed by printconf-gui-0.3.44-1
pygnome-libglade is needed by rhn_register-gnome-2.7.2-7.x.2
pygnome-libglade is needed by up2date-gnome-2.7.2-7.x.6
[root@pcclvw1 /]# rpm -e gnome-libs-1.2.13-16 pygnome-1.4.1-3 dateconfig-0.7.4-6 locale_config-0.3.2-1 pygnome-libglade-1.4.1-3 libglade-0.16-4 pygtk-libglade-0.6.8-3 ksconfig-1.9.8-4 printconf-gui-0.3.44-1 redhat-config-users-0.9.2-6 serviceconf-0.6.6-1 rhn_register-gnome-2.7.2-7.x.2 up2date-gnome-2.7.2-7.x.6 hwbrowser-0.3.5-2 ksconfig-1.9.8-4
[root@pcclvw1 /]# rpm -e gnome-audio-1.0.0-12
[root@pcclvw1 /]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 1.2G 586M 535M 53% /
/dev/sda5 15G 7.5G 6.5G 54% /home
none 313M 0 313M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda3 251M 8.8M 228M 4% /var/log
[root@pcclvw1 /]#

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Even after removing all those packages, the amount of space used on the root filesystem did not change to reflect all that I had removed. A couple of them are pretty sizable packages, especially Gnome itself and it's libs...

How is it that I can remove all these packages and have almost the exact same free space on the root partition? I know I removed more than 7Mb of data! Why does a reboot fix this problem and make it show the right info? Is there a way to make it re-check this information immediately?

The specs are RedHat Linux 7.2, on a SCSI drive formatted with ext3 filesystem.

Please help

-ET