dbus sometimes holds a reference to deleted files

[Fergal Daly]

Binary package hint: dbus

I deleted a large (10G) file but got no disk space back. lsof tells me that dbus still has a reference to it. I have no idea why dbus ever had a reference to it, all I did was boot up, play the file with mplayer and then delete it.

dbus doesn't seem to have anything else unusual open and if I delete another random file it doesn't end up with a reference to it. Here's what lsof has to say, the file in question is holy_smoke.mpg .

dbus-daem 12448 fergal cwd DIR 254,5 4096 2 /
dbus-daem 12448 fergal rtd DIR 254,5 4096 2 /
dbus-daem 12448 fergal txt REG 254,5 302692 1007183 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 0,0 0 [heap] (stat: No such file or directory)
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 38416 2302803 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnss_files-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 34352 2302808 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnss_nis-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 79596 2302800 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnsl-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 30436 2302801 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnss_compat-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 220380 2301222 /lib/libsepol.so.1
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 9684 2302770 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 1307104 2302759 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 112362 2302811 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 83512 2301226 /lib/libselinux.so.1
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 126716 1002990 /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1.0.0
dbus-daem 12448 fergal mem REG 254,5 109268 2301342 /lib/ld-2.5.so
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 0u CHR 1,3 8797 /dev/null
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 1u CHR 1,3 8797 /dev/null
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 2u CHR 1,3 8797 /dev/null
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 3r REG 254,26 10427568064 42762262 /home/fergal/video/holy_smoke.mpg (deleted)
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 4u unix 0xcab36680 28800 socket
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 5u CHR 1,3 8797 /dev/null
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 6u unix 0xcab36500 28801 socket
dbus-daem 12448 fergal 7u unix 0xc506ce00 28802 socket

[Fergal Daly (fergal)]

I'm on feisty and my dbus is 1.0.2-1ubuntu3

[MarkusRechberger (mrechberger)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/230877

this is very likely the same problem.