Finding large files in root

[phil lawton]

I have a root filesystem that is above its threshold and I am trying to isolate the large files which could be causing the problem. The command I and using is........
find . -xdev -size +1000000c -exec ls -l {} \l

My understanding was that the -xdev option would restrict the search to the root directory, but the output includes large files in other filesystems.

How best can I restrict the search to only files in root?

[Stefan Farrelly]

Hmm, thats strange. Ive tried your command on 2 different 10.20 and 11.0 servers and it works fine - it does NOT search mountpoints (/var, /usr, /opt etc.). It only searches root which includes /etc, /dev

What version of find are you running ? maybe a patch issue. Mine is Revision 82.3 (99/10/04)

[Steve Steel]

Hi

1)Try sam
routine tasks
selective file removal

2)What are the file systems it enters.

If AFS this is third party


steve Steel

[phil lawton]

Thanks chaps. Your dead right, it does work! Nothing more than a case of Fat Finger Syndrome.

Thanks anyway.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Phil,

A simple command I always use from the root of a FS is
du -akx | sort -nr | more
This WILL restrict to the FS & sort descending.

HTH,
Jeff

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

If you want to find the large files in a specific directory, then do this eg. for /:

# ll / | awk '{print $5,$9}' | while read size name ; do if [ "$size" -ge "1000000" ] ; then echo $name ; fi ; done

Tested that it works on my system. Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong

[Bill Hassell]

It's not a good idea to look for large files as there may not be any, or the ones larger than 1 meg are supposed to be there. Instead, use the du command as mentioned:

du -kx / | sort -rn | more

It should look something like this:

33480 /
17896 /sbin
14454 /etc
9735 /etc/opt
5507 /etc/opt/resmon
3532 /sbin/fs
3456 /etc/opt/resmon/lbin
1657 /sbin/fs/vxfs
1454 /sbin/fs/hfs
1432 /etc/lvmconf

The vast majority of problems with the root filesystem filling up is due to a misspelled device file or a directory that does not belong in root. /dev should be about 25k to 45k when you run du:

du -s /dev
36 /dev

If /dev is much larger, use this to find the culprit:

find /dev -type f

Only device files belong in /dev.

Badly written applications will install (without asking permission from root) directories in the / filesystem--they don't belong there! The correct location is /opt. Here's a recent posting on the subject:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xac6d42308663d611abdb0090277a778c,00.html