centos free space on disk not updating

Question

I am new to the linux and working with centos system , By running command df -H it is showing 82% if full, that is only 15GB is free.

I want some more extra spaces, so using WINSCP i hav done shift deleted the 15G record.

and execured df -H once again, but still it is showing 15 GB free. but the free size of the deleted file where it goes.

Plese help me out in finding solution to this

Answer 1

In most unix filesystems, if a file is open, the OS will delete the file right way, but will not release space until the file is closed. Why? Because the file is still visible for the user that opened it.

On the other side, Windows used to complain that it can't delete a file because it is in use, seems that in later incarnations explorer will pretend to delete the file.

Some applications are famous for bad behavior related to this fact. For example, I have to deal with some versions of MySQL that will not properly close some files, over the time I can find several GB of space wasted in /tmp.

You can use the lsof command to list open files (man lsof). If the problem is related to open files, and you can afford a reboot, most likely it is the easiest way to fix the problem.