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butters
Guru
Joined: 13 May 2002
Posts: 427
Location: Poughkeepsie, NY
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 Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 1:32 am Post subject: what is /proc/kcore and why is it taking up 1.2GB!! |
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I was wondering why /proc was taking up 1.2GB on my hard disk, and I found that the very vast majority was due to a single binary file, /proc/kcore. What is this file used for and why is it so big? Is this a normal size for kcore?
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If tugboats were bigger, they'd be the ones getting tugged. |
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desultory
Bodhisattva
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 1:50 am Post subject: |
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| Message from kernel: | | He's not fat, he's my core dump. |
From /usr/src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt.
| Quote: | | kcore Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4)) |
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troymc
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Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 553
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 3:31 am Post subject: |
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Don't worry about anything in /proc. It's a virtual filesystem and is not taking up any disk space.
/proc/kcore should be the size of your memory. It is a gateway to your physical memory. If you read from it, you are reading directly from your physical memory.
troymc |
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hampelratte
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Joined: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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i have the same problem since i have upgraded my ram to 1.5gb | Code: | $ df -h
Dateisystem Größe Benut Verf Ben% Eingehängt auf
/dev/hda2 950M 902M 0 100% /
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as you can see, my root partition has no space left because of kcore. at least some programs think so, for example firefox, when trying to download things to /tmp. that is very annoying. is there a workaround for that problem? can i disable this function in my kernel config?
otherwise i would have to repartition my harddisk, which i want to avoid.
thanks
henrik |
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hampelratte
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Joined: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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| found the answer by myself. there is an option for /proc/kcore in the kernel config. i have disabled this function now and will hopefully not run into this problem again. |
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Stever
Apprentice
Joined: 01 Mar 2005
Posts: 151
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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As previously explained, /proc does not exist on your harddrive, and turning off /proc/kcore support will not free disk space.
Try to see what I mean - /proc is a separate mount from your hd. |
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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| hampelratte wrote: | i have the same problem since i have upgraded my ram to 1.5gb | Code: | $ df -h
Dateisystem Größe Benut Verf Ben% Eingehängt auf
/dev/hda2 950M 902M 0 100% /
|
as you can see, my root partition has no space left because of kcore. at least some programs think so, for example firefox, when trying to download things to /tmp. that is very annoying. is there a workaround for that problem? can i disable this function in my kernel config?
otherwise i would have to repartition my harddisk, which i want to avoid.
thanks
henrik |
Please, read above.
Anything in /proc is not taking any amount of disk space at all. /proc is just an interface to your live kernel, and not a physical filesystem in your hard drive. If your / is full, it is not because of kcore not anything under /proc. |
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hampelratte
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Joined: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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| yes, i know that proc is virtual, but as i explained, for some programs it looks like there is no space left on the device because kcore is included in the calculation of disk usage, though there is enough space left on the device. if i du over all directories, which live on / excluding kcore the sum shows the right value of free disk space. |
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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| hampelratte wrote: | | yes, i know that proc is virtual, but as i explained, for some programs it looks like there is no space left on the device because kcore is included in the calculation of disk usage, though there is enough space left on the device. if i du over all directories, which live on / excluding kcore the sum shows the right value of free disk space. |
No. At least, that would not be a normal behaviour.
/proc is mounted as another filesystem, and as such, its size should not interfere in the rest of partitions. When you do a df -ah you can see the space used and available for each mounted volume, including /proc. Each volume is a separate entity, and the space that /proc/kcore takes should, by no means, interfere with the root partition, the same that /usr or /var don't do so either.
Can you confirm that that space is being counted as used in the root partition or is it just an assumption? If you can really confirm it, then, in that case that would be a bug, though I am not quite sure where to dig first to find it.
Maybe firefox or the others complained for any other reason. Just maybe. |
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eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9891
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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I've found that a 1GB partition is really insufficient to install Gentoo, especially with portage on the same disk.
Make sure /usr/portage is somewhere that has a lot of space to grow, that tree itself takes quite a bit of disk space, coupled with /sbin, etc., will quickly eat up a root partition. You don't detail enough of the partitioning scheme so this is just an assumption and it sounds like you did not preplan partitions (?)...
I was trying to get a 2GB disk install with firefox, that was pretty much impossible to do if I had portage on the same disk...
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hampelratte
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Joined: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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i planned my partition scheme very well except /tmp which should have been on another partition | Code: | # df -h
Dateisystem Größe Benut Verf Ben% Eingehängt auf
/dev/hda2 950M 280M 622M 32% /
udev 760M 2,7M 757M 1% /dev
cachedir 950M 280M 622M 32% /lib/splash/cache
none 760M 0 760M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda5 9,2G 5,7G 3,1G 65% /var
/dev/hda3 9,2G 5,7G 3,1G 65% /usr
/dev/hdc3 3,0G 1,3G 1,6G 46% /opt
/dev/hdc2 2,0G 1,8G 72M 97% /home
/dev/hda1 4,7G 3,9G 851M 83% /mnt/win
/dev/hda6 41G 35G 5,6G 87% /mnt/programme
/dev/hdc4 109G 84G 26G 77% /mnt/daten
/dev/hda7 84G 60G 20G 76% /mnt/dachboden |
as you can see my / only takes 280M and there is 620M left for mainly /tmp, which is enough in most cases.
i figured out the problem: it was firefox in combination with mplayerplug-in. the mplayerplug-in stored a big movie in a temp file in /tmp. after closing the mplayerplug-in tab in firefox the file has been deleted but somehow not really. lsof +L1 still showed this file as (deleted) and tools like ls and du seemed to ignore this file. df included the file for it's calculation. that's why i thought kcore was the bad guy, because kcore was the only big file in /. after closing firefox at all, everything looked fine again. so be careful using the mpalyerplug-in  |
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Roman_Gruber
Advocate
Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 3846
Location: Austro Bavaria
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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interesting thread  |
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