04-07-2008
One possibility is that the directory is NFS-mounted, as era has already mentioned. Another possiblity would be a process that writes to this directory. Suppose a process that writes more or less constantly to a file, something like "vmstat 1 > /some/file" if you now remove "/some/file" ls will not show it, but it will still be there as long as the process (vmstat in this example) runs. You can see that by running "df" against the filesystem holding the file.
(btw. this is one excellent method to drive a Sysadmin crazy: Fill up the /tmp filesystem with such a mechanism and use a sufficiently innocent processname. No, do NOT try this on your colleague. ;-)) )
Use a tool like "fuser" to determine processes which still write to the filesystem/directory to remedy such a situation. Once you kill the process the filespace becomes available at once as the respective i-node is released automatically.
I hope this helps.
bakunin
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mvdir(1M) mvdir(1M)
NAME
mvdir - move a directory
SYNOPSIS
dir newdir
DESCRIPTION
moves one directory tree into another existing directory (within the same file system), or renames a directory without moving it.
dir must be an existing directory.
If newdir does not exist but the directory that would contain it does, dir is moved and/or renamed to newdir. Otherwise, newdir must be an
existing directory not already containing an entry with the same name as the last pathname component of dir. In this case, dir is moved
and becomes a subdirectory of newdir. The last pathname component of dir is used as the name for the moved directory.
refuses to move dir if the path specified by newdir would be a descendent directory of the path specified by dir. Such cases are not
allowed because cyclic sub-trees would be created as in the case, for example, of which is prohibited.
does not allow directory to be moved.
Only users who have appropriate privileges can use
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
International Code Set Support
Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.
AUTHOR
was developed by OSF and HP.
SEE ALSO
cp(1), mkdir(1), mv(1).
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
mvdir(1M)