Ouch! "write failed, file system is full"

[Erik Nørgaard]

W. D. wrote:
> How do I get out of this mess?
> 
> gzip: stdout: No space left on device
> Broken pipe
> 
> df
> Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
> /dev/da0s1a     99183    98644    -7395   108%    /
> 
> I tried to do a backup:
> 
> cd /
> mkdir archive
> tar -zcvpf /archive/full-backup-`date '+%Y-%B-%d'`.tar.gz  --directory / --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=archive --exclude=cache .
> 
> What did I do wrong, and how to fix it and do it right?

It looks like you're backing up your entire system on the root
partition. Remove /archive/full-backup*, then backup on a partition with
enough free diskspace.

Be more selective with what you really want to backup, and make sure
there is enough space on the drive you choose to store the backup on.
There is no need to backup anything but:

The config files you've modified, user data (/home and mailboxes) and
logfiles - the latter only if you need to debug.

Normally, the system will backup some of these files in /var/backups.

The rest is recreated on install or when you installworld.

Cheers, Erik
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