device full (insufficient space for allocation)”

[adarsh_4]

i have a disk which has got 56247296 of free blocks out of 142264000. we have a folder on this disk where we do our backup.

recently i get this error "device full (insufficient space for allocation)” even thought there is space on the disk. what can we do to increse the size of this directory.

[Robert Gezelter]

adharsh,

Some context would be useful.

How large was the file being allocated? A SHOW DEVICE/FULL of the device in question would also be useful.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Jeremy Begg]

Adarsh,

What Bob is asking you for will confirm the disk capacity (i.e. the total number of blocks on the disk and the number of free blocks on the disk). It's useful information.

When you say "a folder on this disk where we do our backup", what kind of backup? Do you mean the VMS BACKUP command, or some other program? (Perhaps you mean backup from a remote system?)

Note that VMS doesn't place limits on the number or size of files which can be stored in a particular directory. However it is possible to have a disk quota for each user, ie. a limit to the number of disk blocks in use by each user. Perhaps you have a quota in place for the user who owns the backup files. It's easy to check:

$ MCR DISKQUOTA
DISKQ> USE device:
DISKQ> SHOW *
UIC Usage Permanent Quota Overdraft Limit
%DISKQ-E-EXAMINERR, cannot examine quota file entry
%SYSTEM-E-QFNOTACT, disk quotas not enabled on this volume
DISKQ> EXIT
$

Substitute your disk device name for 'device' in the above commands. The error shown is what you see if there are no quotas defined for the disk.

Regards,
Jeremy Begg

[Hoff]

Here's the generic answer for a disk device that's full:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/939

but for this case, I suspect you have some combination of a severely fragmented disk and/or gigantic directories ("folders" in play here.

The latter case means using subdirectories or otherwise reducing the numbers of files in these directories, and using disk defragmentation or BACKUP to clean up the disk structures.

That, or (given the unfortunate lack of context around the failure) you're simply trying to load more onto the "backup" disk than it has room for. If so, see the link above, and start looking at either bigger or more disks, or both.

[Jon Pinkley]

adarsh,

See this thread about DFU

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1296001

My post made on Dec 12, 2008 07:56:49 GMT has a potential solution to getting some contiguous free space on a disk with highly fragmented free space without having to resort to a complete image backup/restore.

Jon

[Volker Halle]

adarsh,

please show us the exact command used and the exact error message. Use cut & paste to provide this information literally.

Volker.

[adarsh_4]

Mr Bob, here is the sh dev d.

the total blocks is 142264000 and the free blocks as of now is 39939648

the disk quota commands gave this result.

ADARSH>>mc diskquota
DISKQ>use dka200
DISKQ>sh *
UIC Usage Permanent Quota Overdraft Limit
%DISKQ-E-EXAMINERR, cannot examine quota file entry
%SYSTEM-E-QFNOTACT, disk quotas not enabled on this volume


the command we use to do backup is $rmu/backup/online fscfinance:[FINANCE_V2.DATA]FINANCE.RDB - fscback:[db_backup]FINANCE.rbf


the directory is db_backup on fscback (dka200:)

[Hein van den Heuvel]

The assumption has to be that the error is a correct indication of what is going on.

This is not the first time a backup is being made right?

Based on past backups, how big do you expect the RDB backup file to become? How large are the datafiles?

Your first reply indicated 28GB free.
The reply just now indicates 20GB, a 10% swing in device space usage.
So it appears that the device usage is in flux.
Might you have attempted the backup when the free space was at a (temporary) low?

notes:
1) Forget about the directory, for purposes of free space only the device counts, not the directory.

2) Be sure to also issue the command : $SHOW DEVIVE fscback:
... in the context of the process where the backup was tried. Just in case that logical does NOT point where you think it does

3) It is easy and not too much overhead to enable quotas, but I doubt you'll learn more from that.

4) Use DFU to find the big file on the target device:
$ DFU SEARC /SIZE=MINI=5000000 fscback:
If you don;t have DFU, then get it. No OpenVMS system should be without.
http://www.digiater.nl/dfu

Good luck!
Hein

[Volker Halle]

adarsh,

and the exact error message is ???

Volker.

[David Jones_21]

Which OpenVMS version are using and is it a clustered machine? We used to have a problem with the file system being unable to allocate on a volume that had lots of free space. A reboot of the afflicted node would fix the problem. I haven't seen the problem since upgrading to 8.3.

Try a set volume/rebuild=force on the on the disk.