Disk Full But du Finds Nothing: Deleted, Still Open

Symptom

df says 100%; du totals a fraction of that.

Root cause

A deleted file still held open by a process keeps its space hostage.

Fix, in order

1. Find the holderslsof +L1 # deleted but open
2. Restart the process (or reload the service)systemctl restart <svc> # or truncate via /proc/<pid>/fd/<n>
3. Usual suspects: rotated logs kept open, stale containersjournalctl --disk-usage && docker system df

Prevent it coming back

Logrotate with copytruncate or postrotate reloads.

Deep-dive article

Full walkthrough: Disk Full But du Finds Nothing: Deleted, Still Open on the NinjaOps blog.

Run it on clean infra

Spinning up a fresh box to reproduce or escape this error?

Servers with headroom

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Cloud & DevOps tool comparisons · Hardware build guides

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Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog