/: write failed, filesystem is full

Jaap Boender jaapb at kerguelen.org
Wed Oct 5 03:20:10 PDT 2005


On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, jojo wrote:
> Hello,
> I have a problem with the filesystem. I am always getting those "/: write failed, filesystem is full" errors. If I have a look on df the root has 109% Capacity. How could that be?
> I had a file in /root with 3.3G that I have now deleted but with no success. The df output is as before. I am using Raid1(Mirror) with two 80Gig ST380011A/3.04 HDs.

The filesystem always reserves a bit of space above 100%. Normal users can fill
the filesystem up to 100%, and the root user can go to 110% (if I remember 
orrectly). Hence the 109%.

> du -hd1
> 1.5K    ./dev
> 2.5G    ./usr
> 555M    ./var
> 885M    ./www
> 2.4M    ./stand
> 1.5M    ./etc
> 2.0K    ./cdrom
> 2.0K    ./dist
> 7.3M    ./bin
> 18M    ./boot
> 2.0K    ./mnt
> 2.0K    ./proc
> 18M    ./root
> 21M    ./sbin
> 24K    ./tmp
> 76K    ./cgb
> 4.0G    .
>
> The du output does not agree with the df output. Where are the 4.9Gig of / ?
> What can I do? Somebody had this problem before?

As you can see, the contents of /var, /www and /usr are also counted, which are
on another file system. You might try du -hx / in order to see only the
contents of / and the directories on that file system.

Anyway, it seems as if your 3.3G file hasn't disappeared, since there is still
4.0G in the root directory...What kind of file was it?

Yours,

   Jaap Boender



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