6

As you see in this dumpe2fs -h output (snipped the end, left the head in case something is important), I have more (about 86000 more, in fact) 'Free blocks' than are reserved, but I get a "no space on device" error even for a little tiny file (echoing something into a file for testing).

Color me stumped.

dumpe2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Filesystem volume name:   
Last mounted on:          
Filesystem UUID:          b7d8fde6-faa4-4c13-b310-32f302cc6db6
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem flags:         signed_directory_hash
Default mount options:    (none)
Filesystem state:         clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              9707520
Block count:              38808000
Reserved block count:     1940400
Free blocks:              2026361
Free inodes:              9583170
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
Fragment size:            4096
Reserved GDT blocks:      1014
Blocks per group:         32768
Fragments per group:      32768
Inodes per group:         8192
Inode blocks per group:   512
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3
  • Do you have quotas enabled or anything like that?
    – Mikel
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 2:11
  • 1
    fsck would be a good idea.
    – Juliano
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 15:17
  • lsof|grep deleted might also give a potential clue.
    – Mat
    Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 9:47

3 Answers 3

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4

Your 160 GB partition is 94.78 % full and its file system is using the default value for reserved block (5%).

You have then only 0.22% of your disk available (~40 MB). There is no much point trying to understand why a tiny file cause a disk full with so little space available.

You system might be at the same time creating log or temporary files that fill this space. Journaling might also play a role here. i.e. your tiny file isn't written directly but through an intermediary location that might require extra space.

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2

You are probably experiencing disk corruption. Boot to single user or recovery mode and run fsck on the affected partition(s).

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1
  • There is no evidence of a disk corruption.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 15:33
0

Please check the number of inodes available with 

df -i /FILESYSTEM-IN-QUESTION

If you are running out of inodes you need to find the mazy of twisty and small files that are filling up the inode table and consolidate them

If, for example, you had 9 million files in /tmp this could cause the problem.

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1
  • 1
    The number of available inodes is already known. There are only 124350 inodes used out of 9707520, i.e. 98.7% are free. This isn't the problem here.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 9:37

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