*BSD News Article 15398


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From: johnj@lobster.sid.mcet.edu (John Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: df's accuracy?
Date: 30 Apr 1993 13:21:08 GMT
Organization: MCET - Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Telecommunications
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Hi all!


	I have a question for you.  I have a 498MB partition for news.
I have noticed that when the filesystem get to having ~450MB in it df reports
that it is 100% used and no space is left.  However, news being the
volumnous thing that it is, occasionally usage has gotten ahead of my zealous
expiration efforts and filled the filesystem up to ~470MB.  At that point
df reports that there is actually negative space available and that it is
~104% full.  My question is, why does df say that the filesystem is at
100% when I'm at ~450MB when the size of the filesystem is really ~498MB?
Is it because that 498MB figure includes some space for bad block remapping
and 386BSD is being nice to me and allowing me to use that additional space
anyway?  Is it just that df is giving me bad information and I should let
the filesystem float at a higher capacity that df's 100%?  BTW, The system's
never complained about not beaing able to write to the filesystem or the
device being full or anything like that.  That tends to make me think that
either df's confused or that this is space that df just doesn't want me to
use.  This is also a consistent condition.  I've had the machine down and back
up on plenty of occasions and this behavior never changes.  I'm running at
patch level 0.2.1.  The disk is off of an adaptec 1540(2?).  Thanks for any
clues anyone is able to provide!

-John