Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Something taking up all the space on my system

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    29 Posts 5 Posters 2.8k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • T
      Troutpocket
      last edited by

      Here's the fsck during single user:

      Forcing filesystem check (5 times)...
      ** /dev/ufsid/5b0df80d6c33863e
      ** Last Mounted on /
      ** Root file system
      ** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
      uhub0: 8 ports with 8 removable, self powered
      ** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
      ** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
      ** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
      ** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
      36366 files, 638029 used, 6213394 free (4610 frags, 776098 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation)
      
      ***** FILE SYSTEM IS CLEAN *****
      ** /dev/ufsid/5b0df80d6c33863e
      ** Last Mounted on /
      ** Root file system
      ** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
      ** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
      ** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
      ** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
      ** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
      36366 files, 638029 used, 6213394 free (4610 frags, 776098 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation)
      
      ***** FILE SYSTEM IS CLEAN *****
      ** /dev/ufsid/5b0df80d6c33863e
      ** Last Mounted on /
      ** Root file system
      ** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
      ** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
      ** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
      ** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
      ** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
      36366 files, 638029 used, 6213394 free (4610 frags, 776098 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation)
      
      ***** FILE SYSTEM IS CLEAN *****
      ** /dev/ufsid/5b0df80d6c33863e
      ** Last Mounted on /
      ** Root file system
      ** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
      ** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
      ** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
      ** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
      ** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
      36366 files, 638029 used, 6213394 free (4610 frags, 776098 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation)
      
      ***** FILE SYSTEM IS CLEAN *****
      ** /dev/ufsid/5b0df80d6c33863e
      ** Last Mounted on /
      ** Root file system
      ** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
      ** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
      ** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
      ** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
      ** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
      36366 files, 638029 used, 6213394 free (4610 frags, 776098 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation)
      
      ***** FILE SYSTEM IS CLEAN *****
      /dev/ufsid/5b0df80d6c33863e: FILE SYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS
      /dev/ufsid/5b0df80d6c33863e: clean, 6213394 free (4610 frags, 776098 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation)
      Filesystems are clean, continuing...
      Mounting filesystems...
      
      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        And after running that it's back down to the expected usage?

        T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • T
          Troutpocket @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10

          When it reaches 100% full I reboot and do the fsck. It comes back with no config so I restore a good config from backup, reboot again, and the system is back to normal, but slowly filling up with invisible stuff.

          stephenw10S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @Troutpocket
            last edited by

            @troutpocket said in Something taking up all the space on my system:

            It comes back with no config

            Hmm, well that's odd. There have been bugs in the past where the config file get updated with bad data and grows exponentially. Do you see no config file at all in /conf? Or in /conf/backup?

            T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • T
              Troutpocket @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10

              After the reboot, the config.xml file is a fresh 8k file. /conf/backup is full of my backup configs, plus I have one off-line I can use. Everything looks good and healthy otherwise. Restoring the good config brings things back to "normal".

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Hmm, maybe check the config file size periodically. Make sure it's not increasing before this happens.

                T 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • T
                  Troutpocket @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10

                  I did. It's not changing. There isn't any file or folder I can find that is dramatically increasing in size. Basically, 24GB is steadily growing on the root filesystem in some way not generally visible to regular filesystem tools. I have a good graph from grafana that I'll post later which helps visualize the linear growth.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • T
                    Troutpocket @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10

                    Here's the last 48 hours. It gracefully fills up until about 30% then there's this weird jaggy thing. Maybe syslog is attempting to trim logs?

                    The graph goes back to zero when it's 100% full probably because it can't send telegraf data to the logger any more. Then I reboot and fsck and we start again. This trend goes back at least month. I don't keep logs like this longer so I'm not sure when it started.

                    alt text

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      How are you pulling that data? I assume it lines up with the output from df at that time?

                      It's not something I've seen locally where there was no obvious process filling the filesystem.

                      T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • T
                        Troutpocket @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10

                        Telegraf dumps timeseries data from the pfsense firewall to a separate "logger" system (influxdb). It's not stored locally. We do this on 50+ pfsense firewalls and it's not happening anywhere else. I've been comparing configs across multiple sites and they're all nearly identical. I bang these out a few times each month.

                        I guess at this point it has become an academic curiosity for me more than anything else. I can fail over to the other half of the HA pair (yay CARP!).

                        S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • S
                          SteveITS Galactic Empire @Troutpocket
                          last edited by

                          @troutpocket it’s HA? Does it happen on the backup if you make that master?

                          Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                          When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                          Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

                          T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • T
                            Troutpocket @SteveITS
                            last edited by

                            @steveits
                            Nope!

                            I think I tracked something down... I decided to stop Suricata and see what happens. I watched the graph for a bit and the disk space usage leveled out.

                            The graph stopped going up when I stopped Suricata. Dropped like off a cliff when I uninstalled it. Remained level after that.

                            alt text

                            It's like the suricata logs are growing at a normal rate (and truncating at 5GB as configured), but the filesystem thinks they're still growing.

                            S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • S
                              SteveITS Galactic Empire @Troutpocket
                              last edited by

                              @troutpocket but if it doesn’t happen on the backup, I’d think it’s therefore not a configuration issue?

                              Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                              When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                              Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

                              T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • T
                                Troutpocket @SteveITS
                                last edited by

                                @steveits

                                I blew away suricata and reinstalled/reconfigured it. I'm watching the system closely and will report back in 24 hrs.

                                T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • T
                                  Troutpocket @Troutpocket
                                  last edited by

                                  @troutpocket

                                  So far so good. Looks like something about suricata was causing this weird invisible filesystem creep.

                                  bmeeksB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • bmeeksB
                                    bmeeks @Troutpocket
                                    last edited by bmeeks

                                    @troutpocket said in Something taking up all the space on my system:

                                    @troutpocket

                                    So far so good. Looks like something about suricata was causing this weird invisible filesystem creep.

                                    Probably a zombie Suricata process. Certain combinations of unusual events can result in more than one Suricata instance running on the same interface. That leads to weird troubles. One of those could easily have been a stuck "open" invisible log file.

                                    In the future, to see if duplicate Suricata processes are running, execute this command from a CLI prompt (directly on the console or via SSH):

                                    ps -ax | grep suricata
                                    

                                    You should see only one Suricata process ID (PID) per interface. If you see duplicate entries listed, you will need to kill them. Best to stop all instances using the GUI on the INTERFACES tab in Suricata, then run that CLI command again and manually kill any remaining process IDs. Then return to the INTERFACES tab in the GUI and start Suricata again on the configured interfaces.

                                    T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • T
                                      Troutpocket @bmeeks
                                      last edited by

                                      @bmeeks
                                      Even after rebooting the firewall?

                                      bmeeksB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • bmeeksB
                                        bmeeks @Troutpocket
                                        last edited by bmeeks

                                        @troutpocket said in Something taking up all the space on my system:

                                        @bmeeks
                                        Even after rebooting the firewall?

                                        Rebooting will kill any zombie process, so no need to perform the CLI command if you reboot. If you had space continuing to disappear AFTER rebooting, then I am inclined to think Suricata may not have been the issue. It starts with a clean slate after a reboot.

                                        Reading your entire thread again, perhaps the log file itself got hosed within the OS. Suricata will reopen the same log file when restarted or after rebooting. But blowing it away and reinstalling would wipe out the log file.

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • First post
                                          Last post
                                        Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.