UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Dear Group,

I am not much used to UNIX. The company I am hosting wiht refuses to help me with this trouble, but as near as I can see, it is NOT my trouble.

I have had this service for over a year. I just renewed for another year and all of a sudden the disk quota has been disappearing. I deleted all files that grow like log files, mail archives, bounces, stuff like that.

But, the used space keeps growing and now the disk quota is completely full. I have deleted nearly every file off the server and yet the used space keeps growing.

When I tell the owner of the hosting company that this is happening and asked for an explaination, he basically told me he couldn't explain that and that I was stupid for asking.

One person did tell me that there might be some hidden files which I would never be able to see or delete and that what ever was in them is growing. Is this true?

This problem started one week ago, the day after I renewed my serivce. However, I had not added any files to the server after renewing the contract.

I am currently trying to move to a different server because of his repeated poor customer service, but I need to know if this is true about the hidden files and what one can do about this situation I am in if it ever happens again.

Thank you.
cindy

To see the hidden files type

Code:

ls -la

Hmmm. Suggest you enter the root directly of your hosting space and type:

Code:

du -sb *

... and look at the actual disk usage in your space. The <b> -s </b> flag will do a summary for each subdirectory; the <b> b </b> flag will summarize in bytes. You can try other flags for the <b> du </b> utility by looking at the manpage.

Thank you .... but I can't do that. I don't have access to anythign where I would type anything. I have to just upload or download. Nothing else. Any more ideas? The hosting company is being most uncooperative in this matter.

Some one suggested that these might be temporary files created from one of the web pages and that the server is not deleting them when they expire. Could this happen? I don't know how since I am using dreamweaver and letting it do the coding.... maybe that is the problem?

Thank you.
Cindy