Filesystems, Disks and Memory

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

Yaa,

It happens when the package(s) are loaded in memory.Suppose
A process opens a file and somebody removed it..Unless the process which opened the file is killed the space can't br reclaimed

So when you removed the packages some processes were using it(They opened these files).It is true for NETSCAPE etc...

Most of the files on root partition (with or without our knowledge)

are opened when you boot the system....

The only possible solution (As far as I can see) is that you reboot
the machine

Correct me if i am wrong

Ganti