On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 20:00:09 -0700
William Morder <doctor_contendo@...> wrote:

> On Monday 19 March 2018 19:42:36 Nick Koretsky wrote:
> > On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 18:28:24 -0700
> >
> > William Morder <doctor_contendo@...> wrote:  
> > > > > About a month ago, I had something like 2.2 gb free in my / (sda1)
> > > > > partition; then it went down to 1.5, then to 1 gb, then to 800 mb,
> > > > > 600, 400, 200, and now I am at about 165 mb, and sometimes it goes
> > > > > down to 0. In all this time, I haven't installed anything new, or
> > > > > done anything different.  
> > > >
> > > > I may have missed that but it seems no one have asked it in the
> > > > thread
> > > > - did you reboot you system during this time or is it a continuous
> > > > uptime?  
> > >
> > > Yes, I did reboot. I probably was rebooting my system every few days,
> > > just because my Firefox seems to be interfering with my network
> > > connection. And while I was learning the differences in a Debian
> > > system (in contrast to Ubuntu), I also rebooted constantly, because I
> > > was constantly messing up my system. For the past few months, though,
> > > my system has been fairly stable, and I haven't been downloading and
> > > installing new packages.
> > >
> > > Right now the problems are: 1) my vanishing partition, 2) why Firefox
> > > messes up my network connection, and 3) minor bugs.
> > >
> > > Nowadays I might go a week or two without rebooting, unless I end up
> > > with no space left on my root partition.  
> >
> > Well, i mean does reboot reclaim that lost space? You see one of a
> > possible reason for a "vanished" space are open deleted files. If some
> > daemon misbehave with cache or imporper log rotations, etc...  
> 
> It does reclaim some of the lost space, yes - hence one reason for
> rebooting, when I run out of space - but there is still a creeping issue
> of space disappearing in increments of a couple mb at a time. 
> 

Well, than you have two different issues at hand. Two deal with a space
that is reclaimed by reboot, run (when some space already gone)
  lsof -nP +L1
and look for anything suspicious here. Also, if /tmp is on real disk (not
tmpfs), it is also a primal suspect for a space that is reclaimed by reboot.

For an issue with a long term lost space, the only thing i cab suggest it
to setup a cron to run something like 
 du -xcbd2 / > $(date +\%j%H)
  


-- 
  Nick Koretsky (nick.koretsky@...)