limit / from filling up

[keith demingware]

I am concerned with the possibility that / in my filesystem can get filled up with say a script that keeps running in a loop and fills it up. I am running unix 11.23 on my itanium server. So my question is, is there a way of locking down the / directory from say going over 95% but once it does get to 95% i still have the capability of logging into root and clearing the file that is taking up all of the space. I hope this is clear.

[Pete Randall]

Probably the best you can do is a cron script that monitors the size of / and emails you a warning whenever it starts to grow too large. There is no way to set a limit.


Pete

[MarkSyder]

Make sure whoever writes scripts that will run on your system knows to put them in a dedicated filesystem with log files written to that filesystem.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[V. Nyga]

Hi,

another possibility is 'quota' - this should exist in 11.23 too.
You have to check if it works for your environment. Every single user should have less then this 5% you want to hold back ...
So no single user can fill up your file system - well maybe all together they can, so in addition you should use a script like mentioned before.

Check this
http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90672/ch05.html
http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60130/quota.1.html
and also:
http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90672/ch04s11.html

HTH
Volkmar

[Geoff Wild]

This is one of the reasons why you should NOT have a flat file system. (IE - create a single filesystem and not have tmp, home, usr, opt, and others...)

The only way to will up / (under normal setup) is by the root account.

So, a regular user shouldn't be able to - unless you change permissions to a directory that belongs to the / filesystem.

Rgds...Geoff

[Bill Hassell]

Your concern is valid (don't let / fill up). But it is not possible unless the script is running as root. The / directory (and directories local to / such as /etc and /sbin) does not allow ordinary users to store anything there.

Now the only task is to have a proper peer review of EVERY script that will be run by root. No script should be allowed to write anything into the / directory.

However, the more common ways that / fills up are from backup programs that misspell the tape drive name, crashed applications dumping big core files, and the overuse of the root login when it is not needed.

[dirk dierickx]

hpux should get this interesting features from linux.

/ filling up should never happen, but it does.