Help finding missing disk space

[juliebarkley]

I am rather new at ImageMagick and the command line in general. I needed to batch convert some images, but used the convert command rather than mogrify several times (which didn't work). I got error messages each time it failed, but didn't realize that the available space on my computer was dropping by 1-2GB each time I ran the command. I thought this was probably temp files left over after the failed convert, so I restarted, but the space is still in use. I have about 10GB "missing" now. Could someone help me figure out what happened, and how to get that space back? I am running MacOS 10.6.8. I'm not sure of the ImageMagick version as I don't know how to check it but it is at least 1 year old.

[fmw42]

To check the IM version, type

Code: Select all

convert -version

How did you install IM? Did you install from MacPorts or from the IM binary or from the IM source code?

What do you get from either

Code: Select all

type -a convert

or

which -a convert

Check your /tmp directory and see if it has Imagemagick files listed.

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cd /tmp
ls

[juliebarkley]

Thanks for helping!

Ok, my version is ImageMagick 6.8.9-1 Q16 i386 2014-07-25. It was installed with HomeBrew.

Both of the convert -a commands give: convert is /usr/local/bin/convert

It looks like my /tmp directory contains some weird stuff:

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Macintosh:tmp juliebarkley$ ls
Digital Editions
KSOutOfProcessFetcher.501.HVXI9pQwBk_bgiVJaTNhiQNhqxc=
adobe-de
icssuis501
launch-8fKNjW
launch-8rOIOm
launch-JrvivE
launchd-1204.XE3z9M
launchd-90.8gCT4l

I'm guessing these are all ImageMagick files except Digital Editions and adobe-de (possibly also icssuis501?). I'm not sure how to check that, or delete them, though. If I search for these through the normal Mac search, I come up empty (no surprise). As I said, noob to the command line.

[fmw42]

No, Imagemgick files would say "magick", if I recall correctly. I do not know where these came from.

Use

Code: Select all

ls -al 

to see the file sizes.

[juliebarkley]

Hmm, I don't understand the result of ls -al:

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Macintosh:tmp juliebarkley$ ls -al
total 0
drwxrwxrwt  10 root          wheel  340 10 Dec 03:15 .
drwxr-xr-x@  6 root          wheel  204  1 Jan  2015 ..
drwxrwxrwx   2 juliebarkley  wheel   68  9 Dec 00:16 Digital Editions
drwx------   3 juliebarkley  wheel  102 10 Dec 02:10 KSOutOfProcessFetcher.501.HVXI9pQwBk_bgiVJaTNhiQNhqxc=
drwxrwxrwx   3 juliebarkley  wheel  102  8 Dec 22:52 adobe-de
srwxr-xr-x   1 juliebarkley  wheel    0  8 Dec 14:16 icssuis501
drwx------   3 juliebarkley  wheel  102  8 Dec 14:15 launch-8fKNjW
drwx------   3 juliebarkley  wheel  102  8 Dec 14:15 launch-8rOIOm
drwx------   3 juliebarkley  wheel  102  8 Dec 14:15 launch-JrvivE
drwx------   3 juliebarkley  wheel  102  8 Dec 14:15 launchd-90.8gCT4l

The "incident" happened on December 6 at about 4am, so it doesn't look like any of these files are the guilty parties anyway.

[fmw42]

The files are too small to be of significant loss of disk space. Sorry, I have no further suggestions. Might you have accidentally duplicated some directory?

[juliebarkley]

I'm going to go through my backups to see if I can figure out where the space went. I was watching free disk space drop as the command was running, so I know it was related to the malformed ImageMagick command, but that's about it. Thanks so much for your time and effort anyway!

[fmw42]

Free disk space may go up as Imagemagick runs, since it may use disk space for temps and certain will write output images to disk. But it should drop again, especially if you reboot, if the temps are deleted automatically as they should. Did you check that?

[juliebarkley]

I did restart the computer, but there was no change. Well, it did clear some space as always on a restart, but not as much as I was hoping for.

[fmw42]

There are tools you can get that will search your disk for very large files. Perhaps that will help.

[fmw42]

Another possibility is that your disk space is fragmented and needs to be defragmented. But if you go that route, be sure to back it up first.

[juliebarkley]

There are tools that will search for very large files? Could you name some?

[fmw42]

For Mac, see for example Grandperspective or Omnidisksweeper or just do a google search for such tools.

Try google search for

"mac application find missing disk space"

or

"mac application find large files"

[juliebarkley]

Thank you! I used GrandPerspective and found 649 files, whose names all start with "magick-", in private/var/tmp. Since they are all around 13-14 MB, that makes almost 9GB. Thank you again very much for sharing your time and expertise.

[fmw42]

Sorry, I did not know where your install set the tmp directory. On my system I have

lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 Oct 19 2014 tmp -> private/tmp

So /tmp is linked to /private/tmp

See http://www.imagemagick.org/script/resources.php about setting the tmp directory.