Strange Linux behaviour!?

Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Oliver Pitzeier]

Hi folks!

Strange things are happinging some times, and here we have a new. :-)

We have a machine with five partitions mounted. One of those partitions
is /usr. We can created files on /usr, but we cannot created
directories. mkdir says, that there is no space left on device, but
there actually IS space as you can see and files can be created, so why
NO directories? Is it the kernel, is it the filesystem, is it the full
moon high in the sky? :-) I have no clue, but maybe you have... Any
help/idea is welcome!

Please have a look at this log:

uname -a
Linux apache2.dev.xxx.at 2.4.18-3 #1 Thu Apr 18 07:37:53 EDT 2002 i686
unknown

mount -l
/dev/sda7 on / type ext3 (rw) [/]
none on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw) [/boot]
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda6 on /tmp type ext3 (rw) [/tmp]
/dev/sda2 on /usr type ext3 (rw) [/usr]
/dev/sda5 on /var/log type ext3 (rw) [/var/log]

df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7              10G  1.9G  8.0G  19% /
/dev/sda1              38M   15M   21M  40% /boot
none                  504M     0  503M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda6             243M  103M  128M  45% /tmp
/dev/sda2             4.8G  703M  3.8G  16% /usr
/dev/sda5             648M   19M  597M   3% /var/log
/usr

cd /usr
mkdir test
mkdir: cannot create directory `test': No space left on device

cd /tmp
mkdir test
ls
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         1024 May  7 09:08 test

mkdir --version
mkdir (fileutils) 4.1
Written by David MacKenzie.

Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is
NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE.

Best regards,
 Oliver

PS: Please CC answers to dh@uptime.at

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 10:33:02AM +0200, Oliver Pitzeier wrote:
> cd /usr
> mkdir test
> mkdir: cannot create directory `test': No space left on device

?Have you checked whether you're out of inodes?

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Keith Owens]

On Fri, 7 May 2004 10:33:02 +0200, 
"Oliver Pitzeier" <oliver@linux-kernel.at> wrote:
>We have a machine with five partitions mounted. One of those partitions
>is /usr. We can created files on /usr, but we cannot created
>directories. mkdir says, that there is no space left on device, but
>there actually IS space as you can see and files can be created, so why
>NO directories?

df -i, you have run out of inodes.

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Dick Streefland]

[Posted and mailed]

"Oliver Pitzeier" <oliver@linux-kernel.at> wrote:
| We have a machine with five partitions mounted. One of those partitions
| is /usr. We can created files on /usr, but we cannot created
| directories. mkdir says, that there is no space left on device, but
| there actually IS space as you can see and files can be created, so why
| NO directories? Is it the kernel, is it the filesystem, is it the full
| moon high in the sky? :-) I have no clue, but maybe you have... Any
| help/idea is welcome!

You probably ran out of inodes. Check "df -i".

-- 
Dick Streefland                      ////                      Altium BV
dick.streefland@altium.nl           (@ @)          http://www.altium.com
--------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------------------------

RE: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Oliver Pitzeier]

> On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 10:33:02AM +0200, Oliver Pitzeier wrote:
> > cd /usr
> > mkdir test
> > mkdir: cannot create directory `test': No space left on device
> 
> ?Have you checked whether you're out of inodes?

No we havn't. After rebooting the machine with 2.6 everything works...
So inodes are not our problem...

Best,
 Oliver

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[DervishD]

    Hi Keith :)

 * Keith Owens <kaos@ocs.com.au> dixit:
> On Fri, 7 May 2004 10:33:02 +0200, 
> "Oliver Pitzeier" <oliver@linux-kernel.at> wrote:
> >We have a machine with five partitions mounted. One of those partitions
> >is /usr. We can created files on /usr, but we cannot created
> >directories. mkdir says, that there is no space left on device, but
> >there actually IS space as you can see and files can be created, so why
> >NO directories?
> df -i, you have run out of inodes.

    But if you have run out of inodes, you cannot create files
neither, am I wrong? Olives states clearly in his message that files
can be created, but no directories :?

    Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado

-- 
Linux Registered User 88736
http://www.pleyades.net & http://raul.pleyades.net/

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Timothy Miller]

Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 10:33:02AM +0200, Oliver Pitzeier wrote:
> 
>>cd /usr
>>mkdir test
>>mkdir: cannot create directory `test': No space left on device
> 
> 
> ?Have you checked whether you're out of inodes?
> 


What happens when Linux runs out of inodes?  Why would it?  Doesn't it 
create more?

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[DervishD]

    Hi Timothy :)

 * Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com> dixit:
> >?Have you checked whether you're out of inodes?
> What happens when Linux runs out of inodes?

    It returns ENOSPC on write operations on the filesystem.

> Why would it?

    Because you created lots of dirs and files ;)

> Doesn't it create more?

    EXT2 and EXT3 doesn't, the number of inodes is specified when doing
mke2fs and it's fixed. Don't know what happens under other
filesystems, but for me doesn't make much sense to create more
inodes: inodes themselves occupy disk space, and if you've run out of
inodes, you probable are near to run out of disk space too. Moreover,
disk structures are a bit complex and adding inodes is not an easy
task in most filesystems :?

    I've been seeing this problem lately on myself. I have a disk to
store temporarily backups and large files in general, so I formatted
it with ext2 using one inode per megabyte of data. This filesystem
usually have 10-50 files, no more, and even with 1/1MB inode ratio,
there were more than 10000 inodes. But when I accidentally
uncompressed one of the backups in the disk, I run out of inodes
*FAST*. I mean, the disk was 80% empty and I didn't have free inodes,
but this is not the common case, since usually you will have an inode
per 4kB of data, so if you don't have free inodes it will usually
mean that your disk space will exhaust soon, too. This is the common
case, I think, so it doesn't worth the effort of adding a few more
inodes just for making the agony longer ;)

    Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado

-- 
Linux Registered User 88736
http://www.pleyades.net & http://raul.pleyades.net/

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Pascal Schmidt]

On Fri, 07 May 2004 19:30:08 +0200, you wrote in linux.kernel:

> What happens when Linux runs out of inodes?  Why would it?  Doesn't it 
> create more?

For many filesystems, the number of inodes *on* *disk* is set at
mkfs time.

-- 
Ciao,
Pascal

Re: Strange Linux behaviour!?

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Fri, 7 May 2004, Pascal Schmidt wrote:

> On Fri, 07 May 2004 19:30:08 +0200, you wrote in linux.kernel:
>
> > What happens when Linux runs out of inodes?  Why would it?  Doesn't it
> > create more?
>
> For many filesystems, the number of inodes *on* *disk* is set at
> mkfs time.
>
> --
> Ciao,
> Pascal
> -

You are being suckered in. "Out of inodes", roughly translated,
means "disk or disk partition is full". You can use `df -k` to
see.


Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.26 on an i686 machine (5557.45 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.