Not able to write to a particular path

[Ravi Jayachandran_1]

Our PDM system is writing files to a volume which has several paths. We couldn't write files to one specific path in this volume from yesterday. I've checked all mount & export options if the privileges were changed but everything looks as they mean to look.

Any suggestions or do we need to check elsewhere.

[RAC_1]

PDM?? What is this?? Is this on unix??
What about perms, ownership about path??

[Ravi Jayachandran_1]

PDM is product data management software. The database is Oracle & the volume is stored on UNIX. Ownership is with single user and permission is 1755. It was working fine till yesterday.

[RAC_1]

What is the error that you get?? Does this write to particular file or to file system??
If writing to file, what are the perms on dir that holds that file??

[Ravi Jayachandran_1]

We have a master directory which has multiple sub-directories. As defined in the PDM system a particular group is writing to this specific sub-directory which alone is not allowing any files to be written. Error message is unable to create file.

This started suddenly from this morning. We are able to write files into all other sub-directories.

The no. of files in this sub-directory is around 127,700. Is that an issue?

[RAC_1]

Did you check the perms of root dir of this problematic subdir??

Is file system full?? Is there enough space??
Also any more detailed error message??

[Torsten.]

Hi Ravi,

please check syslog for any error messages.
I think we'll need more input...

[Marlou Everson]

Is it the operating system or the application that is having the problem? Can you cd to the directory and create a file (touch abc)? Perhaps you do not have enough inodes (bdf -i).

Marlou

[Ravi Jayachandran_1]

The permissions are OK for the top level of this sub-directory. File system has another 50 GB left.
This is how it is setup. There are 2 volumes or disks mounted on client workstations. Each have 2 major groups divided into multiple sub-directories based on users groups in the PDM application. From the application we are able to write into all other sub-directories in both the volumes except this particular path. We cd to this directory manually and "touch" multiple files successfully. The no. of files in this directory was 127,700. Initially we thought it was the no. of files. Through a cron we added 1300 more files with no problem of 10 MB size. I also checked for bdf -i and the no. of inodes spent was just 5%.
What the application does is whenever a file is saved or created, it first saves into the /var/tmp directory and then it copies through network to the specific directories based on the groups. We spoke with the vendor of the application and they say it's not a problem with application since we are able to push files to other locations. This problem started just yesterday and have got us completely baffled.
Error messages in the log files says "Unable to create files in /usr/.../..../.../"
Any input would be appreciated.

[RAC_1]

"/usr/.../..../.../"
Check perms on "/usr/"
"/usr/.../"
"/usr/.../..../"

All should be ok. Are the files getting created in temporary directory?? - /var/tmp??
What are the perms on this dir?? As that user, goto /var/tmp and try creating a file.
Now the application/program that picks up file from /var/tmp OK?? If file are coming to /var/tmp without problems, and if app/program that copies it to other location, does apps/program check if they are still in use or not??

[Ravi Jayachandran_1]

Checked up all permissions, everything looks ok. The file is getting created in /var/tmp and it's imported to all other locations except this one.

When I listed the contents 1 level above, the dir size of this path is 20,971,520. Is there any limit on the max dir size?

[RAC_1]

This still seems to be erms problem. Again you need to check all perms on dirs above this sub-dir.

As that user, can you move files from /var/tmp to that location??

The number of files does not have limitation. (Check if your application any such thing.)
The number of backups will have impcat on backups, dir looksups, restores, ls etc.

[Bill Hassell]

No real limits to the size of a directory although hundreds of thousands of files and directories can be a big pain to manage. Now the only way to verify that that this is a permission problem is to login as the PDM user so you'll have the same ownership and group privileges. To create a file, your user must have write and execute permission for that directory, so cd to that directory and try creating a test file using the touch command. Note also that programs sometimes report permission problems cryptically and the problem may be that the source file can't be read to perform the copy. Also, make sure you can traverse the directory tree, one cd at a time.

[Blofeld]

Ravi
Try doing the copy as another user as well. Maybe specific issue with perms of the PDM user.