AIX

df shows filesystems, not files.

Files in / will be files that aren't contained beneath any other folder shown in df.

You were given the command to show files, earlier: du.

Code:

du -ks * | sort -rn

Flies by too fast for you to read? Stick a less on the end, that's a tool for you to remember.

Code:

du -ks * | sort -rn | less

If your system's du has -x, even better, then you can use that to find files only in / itself:

Code:

du -xks * | sort -rn | less

I will ask a simple question ( or two ):
Are you root on this aix box?
A you learning aix, and so using smit?
Did you do alot of smit/smitty today?
If so you shoulg think to purge periodically your smit.log file...

Under AIX / is not a big file system:

Code:

n12:/root $ df -k   
Filesystem    1024-blocks      Free %Used    Iused %Iused Mounted on
/dev/hd4           262144    141620   46%     3232    10% /

You can see it is used at 50% of 200 MB, on that /root uses almost a half...
the trouble with root filesystem id that it hold /dev
Any wrong command like archiving to tape on the wrong or inexistent device will create a file e.g. like /dev/wrongtape that can depending what you did, be huge...
/dev should be less than 2MB... if not there is junk in it...

The / filesystem is usually part of rootvg. You can run this command to see what filesystems are part of rootvg:

Code:

lsvg -l rootvg | egrep -v 'N\/A'

I usually find a culprit in either /var, or if you have Legato Networker installed, /nsr/logs which contains a log that sometimes gets out of control.

Hope this helps.

vbe, Yes I'm root on the box. I did delete the smit transaction log (it really wasn't that large).

in2nix4life, Ok...I want to check my understanding (being a Windows guy it's different under Windows)..when I list out the file systems within the root vg by using the command above (/,/usr,/var,/tmp,/home,/opt,/admin,/var/adm/ras/l) these are the default file systems created during the install. So (in my mind)...any other folders listed are by default in the / file system. Except of course any symbolic links that may point to other file systems.

I'm guessing this is correct as I did find a folder when I did a ls -l from $ that contained a growing number of log files being generated by our ERP system, that when I deleted them I reclaimed over 400mbs of space in /

If someone can confirm that my understanding is not wrong, that would be great!

I really do appreciate the input and patience! It's really frustrating to know what I want to do, but not have the Unix understanding to get there. I'm learning...slowly but surely!

Cheers!

While running Windows, have you ever thought "I wish I could make c:\whatever be on a different drive, because this stupid application/daemon/user is filling all of C"? That's how UNIX filesystems are attached inside each other. Instead of becoming arbitrary drive letters with files inside, they get put where convenient, with one main partition at the root of it all. The file tree is organized like /opt, /usr, and so forth to make it easier to parcel different kinds of data on different partitions.

If all those extra filesystems weren't mounted, they'd just be perfectly ordinary empty folders. Yes, exactly. Any folders which aren't within any other mountpoints are inside /

Yes, "du" provides LOTS of info. You need to find the jems in it (e.g. the oversized files that are too large, OR the oversized directories that have too many files). You can sort it (as suggested), or select on it (with awk, for example). Building commands to do what YOU want (and not depend on some programmer having thought of your needs ahead of time) is the traditional Unix way.

What does this do for you?

Code:

du -x / | sort -n | tail

If /tmp or /var/tmp is full, sort may fail. If that is an issue, try awk to select on large numbers.

Code:

du -x | awk '{if($1>65536)print $0;}'

Or use sort -T <new path>