What can I do if root filesystem full?

[Ryan Ma]

How to recover if root filesystem full?

Thx.

HP-UX Test B.11.00 U 9000/800 (td)

login: root
Password:
Last successful login for root: Tue May 7 12:26:50 EAT-8 2002 on pts/tc
Last unsuccessful login for root: Thu Apr 18 10:29:46 EAT-8 2002 on pts/tb


vxfs: mesg 001: vx_nospace - /dev/root file system full (1 block extent)

Wait for login exit: ..

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi Ryan,

a typical error is, that someone tried to do a backup and used a wrong device file name! ( /dev/rmto for example ) this would write the backup into root file system, which could get full then. First of all, check this out. After that you could use find- command to get rid of anything, which is no longer needed. You could search for files of a specified size, age, or user, and move them, or delete them. Do a backup, if they are needed!

find /path desired_files -exec mv /path {} \;

more information: man find

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi,

Look for core files, tar, gz files and log files, but check them out before removing them! you do not want the same thing to happen again!

Gideon

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

du -s /*

to find out the big ones.

If you're having an application recurringly dump or misbehave:
ln -s /dev/null core

Later,
Bill

[T G Manikandan · Accepted solution]

check this link

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xbe6e1cc6003bd6118fff0090279cd0f9,00.html

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

one for the /dev/

# du -s /dev/* | sort -n | grep -v 0
2 /dev/diag
4 /dev/pts
4 /dev/pty
4 /dev/ptym

Later,
Bill

[Ryan Ma]

Hi all,

Since I cannot telnet, rlogin, ftp, console login, I think I can just go to Guardian Service Processor and reset to single user mode before I can do anything.

Thx.

[T G Manikandan]

Yes do a reset but
when you boot again interrupt the boot process interact with IPL
then boot into single user mode and do the needful.

IPL>hpux -is

THanks
G Manikandan

[T G Manikandan]

Hello,
Please try logging in as a normal user and do a
su to root user.
Please check this out.

Thanks

[Trond Haugen]

Yes, you'll have to boot in single user to "get inn". You will then have to activate vg00 (vgchange -a y vg00) and run 'mount -a' (non-vg00 filesystems will not mount) before you can use most of the commands.

Regards,
Trond

[David Burgess]

Just a thought. Can you ftp to the system and then look for the large file? Check /dev first. ls -la will find it. Use delete to remove it.

HTH

Dave.

[harry d brown jr]

Two quick clean ups:

find /dev -type f -exec rm -i {} \;

find /tmp -type f -size +100000c -exec rm -i {} \;


live free or die
harry

[Sukant Naik]

Hi Ryan,

One more suggestion. Can you send us info about whether /var, /usr, /opt directories have been created in the / filesystem.

If you have for your /var directory in the root filesystem, then check for /var/adm/crash directory. It will contain lots of crash dumps which you can remove.

-Sukant

[Pete Randall]

Ryan,

One thing that got me years ago was a file system that had been unmounted, allowing output that should have gone into the file system to go into the root file system instead. While you're in single user mode, do a "ls -l" for each of the file system mount points. If there's anything there (while the file system is not mounted) it's filling up your root file system.

Good luck,
Pete

[Victor_5]

Hi Ryan:

There are tons of posts talking about this problem in this forum, if I were you, the first thing I need to do is search, key in keyword "root full", you will get a lot of posts which will be useful for you. Good luck!

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi Ryan

Whenever it happens to me , ans since i cannot login so cannot run a find ,etc so I ftp to the system , then immediatley go to /etc and delete wtmp , or /var/adm and delete OLD syslog as these files free up some blocks , then I doa normal login and procedd with cleaning.


Manoj Srivastava

[jd-gt]

I just did this very thing on Sunday. I fortunately had a telnet session established and did indeed find a core file as the culprit.

Please be advised, doing a find for large files and removing them may not be the most prudent act. You'll want to be sure the file that is deleted is the file you really want to delete.

Also, as you may have discovered by now, if you do not have an established telnet connection you can not create a new one when the root file system is full. On the same line, you cannot su - to root for the same reason.

One person had the perfect answer in my book. reset, interrupt the startup, boot up in single user mode, mount /dev/vg00, and mount -a. Start the search.

Good luck!

[Roger Baptiste]

hi,

Once i ran into this problem and was able to free space through Openview server ;-) Openview has options for sending commands through it's socket to its clients.

Another option worth a try would be to do remsh from other boxes. Ofcourse, this is assuming that you have remsh or openview setup
for the system.

HTh

[Ryan Ma]

Thanks for all of your suggestion.

Let me summarize what I have done.
1. telnet / login as ordinary user and root (fail)
2. console / login as root (fail)
3. ftp / login as root (fail)

Here is what I haven't try
1. rlogin (not authorize to use)
2. remsh (not authorize to use)

Thanks G Manikandan that the first one gave me the answer (Reset the system).
Thanks Pete Randall,
Sorry Victor, sorry for making a new post rather than searching first.


Sukant Naik, my system is installed in default config ( /, /var, /tmp, /home, /stand, /usr, /opt )