Ubuntu
dosfstools package

Disk utilities report incorrect used and free space

Bug #106439 reported by Patrick K
8
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
dosfstools (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

All the disk utilities I have running under Edgy (Gnome) misread the free and used space on one partition in particular (a couple others are incorrect, too, but not by nearly as much). I haven't had any luck getting an answer on UbuntuForum.org. Here is the thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=372324

The main problem is: the partition (FAT32) is about 36 GB and I have over 21 GB of files on this partition. However, all the provided disk utilities plus an installed version of GParted show the used space as about 850MB and the free space as 35.3GB. The only exception is the property sheet in Nautilus which shows the used space correctly (21.1GB) but still shows the free space as 35.3 GB. I ran GParted from the Ubuntu LiveCD and it read the partition information correctly. Windows98 reads the partition correctly. I have no problems at this time reading or writing to this partition. I am concerned that problems could arise and would like to fix this. Screenshots and results of various commands are posted in the above link.

Revision history for this message
Patrick K (pkelley2) wrote :

I forgot to mention the partition is question is dev/hda6.

Revision history for this message
Patrick K (pkelley2) wrote :

Here is a spreadsheet I put together. It shows the results of running an installed version of Gparted, the property pages from Nautilus, and the Edgy LiveCD version of GParted. These are the partitions that have problems. I've highlighted the trouble spots. The LiveCD version of GParted is the only one that is correct. I'd like to get this sorted out before moving to Feisty Fawn.

Revision history for this message
Patrick K (pkelley2) wrote :

I discovered something that might make a difference. I unmounted volume hda6 (now sda6 in Feisty) and the used and free space are shown correctly in the installed version of GParted. When the volume is mounted these parameters are shown incorrectly. Of course, it is empty in Nautilus.

I sure wish someone would get on this. I'm really concerned about these errors.

Revision history for this message
wolfger (wolfger) wrote :

Assigning this to the package I think it belongs to (since multiple tools report the size incorrectly). I see this bug is rather old... Is the problem still existing? Any new info you can give?

Revision history for this message
Onno Benschop (onno-itmaze) wrote :

While I understand why you may think this is a dosfstools bug, it's really not.

This is really IMHO a policy bug that applies across the board.

Also, the bug talks about gparted, not dosfstools.

Finally, dosfstools does not actually show sizes anywhere that I'm aware of.

dino99 (9d9)
Changed in dosfstools (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Invalid
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