How to access "Other Usage" on disk usage?

whipworks

• June 26, 2020 08:07

Hi Support, We've been having this issue for the longest time, and there's really no proper solution given to this. We need to know how to access this "other usage" that is taking up space on the disk usage. Why it's being generated randomly and why can't we (and even users) gain access to it to clear it. This is just a small sample of one account on our servers. We have multiple customers/accounts getting their disk space filled up because of this. Hopefully we can get more explanation and a better solution (hopefully a permanent one) to fix this. Thank you.

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  Handssler Lopez

  • June 26, 2020 23:19

  Generally this "Other" disk usage is generated by email accounts that delete messages but these are not completely purged. You can verify this using horde to see in each of the email accounts the messages that have been deleted, and you can purge them by clicking in the upper right corner Other >> Purge deleted Maybe someone can give you a better help or answer and I hope I have helped you!

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  cPanelLauren

  • June 27, 2020 00:09

  @Handssler Lopez you are partially correct, there are other reasons for this as well, such as backup files owned by the user outside of their home directory. Basically OTHER usage is files owned by that user anywhere else on the server outside of the homedir - typically a root-level user would need to search for these items and let you know where what the other usage is attributed to.

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  whipworks

  • June 29, 2020 13:01

  So what's the work around on this?

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  cPanelLauren

  • June 29, 2020 23:24

  For other usage we use some of the following to identify these: Find user-owned files outside of the user's home directory ("other usage") The following command will create a files_outside_homedir.txt list of files belonging to that user outside of their home directory. Make sure that you set the cpaneluser variable before running it Otherwise, it will fail with an error message. If they have a non-standard home directory, such as /mnt/"${cpaneluser}" rather than /home/"${cpaneluser}", replace that as well.

  find / -path /home/virtfs -prune -o -path /home/"${cpaneluser:?remember_to_set_variables}" -prune -o -user "${cpaneluser}" -ls > files_outside_homedir.txt 2>/dev/null

  If you want only a specific filesystem, and not the whole server, specify the mountpoint (such as /home/ or /home4/ rather than /), and include the -xdev or -mount flag (see
  For example, if a file is using 16 blocks that are 512 bytes each, the total size of that file on disk is 8K, even though the file might only actually appear to be 5.4K. To check for files that are being held open Check for deleted but open files for the user. Deleted, but still open files will show up in a user's filesystem quota, but be missed by du. This can contribute to "other usage". For example:

  [cptech@server ~]cPs# quota -svu hb1 Disk quotas for user hb1 (uid 1001): Filesystem space quota limit grace files quota limit grace /dev/vda1 959M 0K 0K 436 0 0

  [cptech@server ~]cPs# du -hs /home/hb1 4.5M /home/hb1

  [cptech@server ~]cPs# lsof -nP +L1 | grep hb1 less 745288 root 4r REG 253,1 1000000000 0 29386493 /home/hb1/deleted_file (deleted)

  [cptech@server ~]cPs# ls -lhH /proc/745288/fd/4 -rw-r--r-- 0 hb1 hb1 954M Dec 27 18:02 /proc/745288/fd/4

  There is a 950MB deleted file owned by hb1 being held open by a less process from the root user. Since the filesystem quotas still report this space, it shows up as "other usage" in cPanel. This will clear out once the less is terminated.

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