[NTLUG:Discuss] No Space Left on Device - but not really

[Chris Cox]

Stuart Johnston wrote:
> I have a Redhat ES3 server that just started acting like it was out of 
> space on the /home partition.  According to 'df', home is only about 86% 
> full with about 9gb available.  I deleted some files and it seems back 
> to normal.

You need to show the df here...

> 
> Is there anything in a standard Redhat ES3 install that would prevent a 
> user from writing additional files when a partition gets "close" to 
> full?  Or is there any reason that 'df' might not produce accurate info?

:)  There's nothing I recommend... but you might want to look at
tune2fs and see what your minspace setting is... maybe it was
set too large.  The minspace (or reserved-blocks-percentage) is
the space in the filesystem that is reserved strictly for root.
It's used to allow root to have some room when the drive does
fill up (in order to alleviate the condition).

Could be you're out of inodes ... there could be several things.

Also... ext2/3 needs a forced fsck every so often (it sorta goes
nuts after operating for long periods of time... of course it
depends on how hard it gets hit too).