FIle System Full

[simbahpux]

Hi,

I have a server running on HPUX that is unable to boot. It It has the error "... vx_nospace - /dev/vg00/vvol111 file system full ..." It just hangs here during the booting.

Please advise on how to bypass this. If I can even get access to a shell, I can clear up some files to resolve the issue.

Please assist

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] If I can even get access to a shell, [...]

   Boot from an HP-UX installation medium (DVD, ,,,)?

[simbahpux]

Hi Steven,

The challenge for that is that I cannot find the HPUX DVD. The server was installed more than 6 years ago by a previous admin. Is it possible to use other linux media to boot (which has currently failed for me) and if so please advise on the distribution (The server arch is Itanium)

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] I cannot find the HPUX DVD. [...]

   What else don't you have?  I'll guess: another, similar HP-UX system.
Or any actual HP[E] support.

   Any idea which version of HP-UX?

> [...] Is it possible to use other linux media to boot (which has
> currently failed for me) and if so please advise on the distribution
> [...]

   What kind of "failed"?

   I believe that I've run some version of Debian on an rx2600, some
years ago, but I wouldn't bet that it would know anything about an HP-UX
LVM volume.  I haven't looked for any Linux kit with IA64 support for a
long time, so I don't know what (if anything) is available now.  HP-UX
is UNIX, not GNU/Linux.

   Does a single-user-mode boot get any further?

[Bill Hassell]

Single user mode will work just fine.
It will not  mount any filesystems and give you a shell prompt.
Note that /usr will need to be mounted after booting, perhaps /var and /tmp.

If you not sure about how to boot into single user mode, we'll need to know the computer model and version of HP-UX.

[simbahpux · Accepted solution]

Thanks all for the assistance.

I was finally able to get into the single user mode to delete the data after about 10 attempts doing the same thing. For future reference for those stuck, please see below the steps I used.

Interrupt boot and log into single user mode.
(In the single user mode, your partitions will not be mounted.)
Run fsck to check for disk errors for the partitions. In my case, below were my commands:
#fsck /dev/vg00/vvol10
#fsck /dev/vg00/vvol11
#fsck /dev/vg00/vvol12

Mount all filesystems -> mount -a

check that the partition is mounted and verify the one that is full -> bdf

open the directory that you want to clear files from to resolve disk issue.

Reboot the server and let it boot into its regular mode:

shutdown -ry 0