/proc is a pseudo-filesystem used to access process information from the kernel. It doesn’t use any storage space and uses little memory. On Linux, you can sometimes make modifications to the running kernel by modifying “files” in /proc.

If / is full, run a command similar to the following to sort all files in the / file system by size:

find / -xdev -ls | sort -n -k 7

“-xdev” limits the find command to the root file system.

This will only look for files found in the root and will not includes those partitions that are defined in /etc/vfstab | /etc/fstab file, those listed when `df -k` is executed:

/dev/md/dsk/d0 2058319 1016097 980473 51% /
/dev/md/dsk/d3 2058319 1801793 194777 91% /var
etc .. etc..

Thanks Brandon!

Brandon H. – Senior UNIX Systems Engineer for an application services provider in Minneapolis, MN.