HELP! file system is full

[Jill Streur]

We are trying to print, and we get an error -
/usr: write failed, file system is full.

Our unix admin is on vacation, and I am hoping that someone can walk me through what needs to be done to fix this.

Thank you!

[Muthukumar_5]

what is bdf command output saying.

It is good to see the contents of /usr as
ll /usr

If you have space in other file system try to move directories to there and make a link out.

Before moving them, it is good to see your ll /usr ,bdf reports.

+Muthu+

[Rick Garland]

Look for any core files that may exist in the /usr filesystem.

Do these commands to see what file is the biggest file;
# cd /usr
# du . -x -ka | sort -nr | more

From the list generated you will see what file is the biggest offender.

Do take care when deleting files - make sure what you delete is OK.

[Jill Streur]

The 2 largest files are 279140 - ./spool and 275290 - ./spool mqueue.

Is it ok to delete these files and if so, how do I do it?

[Franky_1]

Hi,

/usr/spool and /usr/spool/mqueue are directories and should therefore not be deleted. You can delete the files inside the mqueue dir using the "rm" command
But be careful - deleting is always a tricky thing :-)

HTH

Franky

[Rick Garland]

The spool is a directory (/usr/spool). The spool/mqueue is a directory as well (/usr/spool/mqueue). This mqueue is for mail to be sent out.

Why is mail not going out? Once this question is answered I'll bet that the space issue will go away

[Rick Garland]

What are some of the date/time stamps on these files?

Has anything changed recently? DNS? The mail relay host? Is there a process (or processes) that is sending loads of mail that the system cannot keep up with the volume? These are questions that need to be answered.

Essentially, you can delete the files in the mqueue directory if you know that nobody will miss their email, don't care to have the email, etc. This will reclaim space. But this will not answer the question, why is mail not working?

[Linda Card]

We used to get a "file system full" message
on weekends usually as the result of a type-o during saves done from the command-line or
somebody booted single user and did a restore without mounting the necessary file systems so everything went into the mount point directory. For example, our tape drive was /dev/rmt/0mn but the operator entered /dev/rmt/omn and the system wrote the save to a file named omn in the /dev/rmt directory instead of to the 4mm tape.

Try this to get a list of big files and then checkout the files themselves to see what is necessary and what is not.

As user 'root'
cd /
find / -size +5000000 -print > big-stuff

Your big-stuff file (directly under /) will have a list of any file over 5Mb. Modify size of files you are looking for as necessary.

If your system was booted Single User and got stuff put in the mount point directories, that is a whole other problem and more delicate.

[Sยภเl Kย๓คг]

Donot remove /usr/spool/mqueue directory.use cd command to change the directory to /usr/spool/mqueue. Use ls -l to list the contents.Use the rm and delete the files.Hope this will freeup sufficient amount of space.
regards
SK