topic File System Full in Operating System - HP-UX

File System Full

Thamm — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 04:01:37 GMT

Hi,
following situation:

There is a full vxfs-filesystem:
1063 -> bdf .
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg00/lvtmp 12288 12288 0 100% /home/gdg/EMPTY

Now I execute the following comand:
echo "XXXX" > /home/gdg/EMPTY/hilf2

I get the following error message:
vxfs: mesg 001: vx_nospace - /dev/vg00/lvtmp file system full (1 block extent)

Nevertheless a file "hilf2" was genererated (but empty):
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 0 Oct 13 10:56 /home/gdg/EMPTY/hilf2

Question:
1. Why could the file be generated.
2. Is it possible to avoid that the file is generated if the space in the filesystem is not large enough?

Regards,
Stefan.

Re: File System Full

john korterman — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 04:09:42 GMT

Hi,
1) the file is generated because the file system is not out of inodes, check by "bdf -i ."
The file name, ownership, permissions etc. require only inode space.

2) only if the situation occurs that the filesystem is out of both space and inodes simultaneously - a situation problably not even of theoretical interest.

regards,
John K.

Re: File System Full

Bharat Katkar — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 04:16:52 GMT

HI,
Yes that is rightly explained.

Is it possible to avoid that the file is generated if the space in the filesystem is not large enough?

...Instead i would suggest you to run the script thr' cron to monitor the filesystems usage and set alerts accordingly and take corrective action before anything happens.

Hope that helps.
Regards,

Re: File System Full

Kent Ostby — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 07:22:24 GMT

Stefan -- In answer to #2, this is something that would have to be done at an application level (i.e. check the free space before write).

Its unlikely that someone would want to code this since it would be considered an error situation that should be corrected at the OS level and would require overhead for each write.

Re: File System Full

Ted Buis — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 15:55:48 GMT

I haven't verified this for a while but it may still be true. In the past, HP-UX by default would reserve 10% for root only access and bdf would report a file system as full, but root would still have some room to play. I had actually filed a file system so bdf reported 111% (1/(1-.90)) utilization as root. Naturally, that cause big problems.