Re: tlug: Broken fs?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

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tlug note from "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
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>>>>> "Christopher" == Christopher Wiles <wileyc@example.com> writes:

    Christopher> On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Shige Abe wrote:

    >> Hello, I seemed to have developed a little problem with my
    >> filesystem. This is what df gives me:
    >> 
    >> Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
    >> /dev/hda2 505503 480739 0 100% /
    >> /dev/hda1 517808 497296 20512 96% /dos
    >> 
    >> Notice the 0 available when I should have 24764.  Is there a
    >> way to fix this?

    Christopher> *If* /dev/hda2 is an ext2 filesystem, then you are
    Christopher> observing correct behavior.

    Christopher> The ext2 filesystem reserves (hmm, I think it's five
    Christopher> percent) of the filesystem for the super-user (it's
    Christopher> the -m option in mke2fs).

Christopher is right.  It's arguable that df should report these
figures differently.  But it doesn't, and it's not that hard to remember.

This is a very dangerous situation to be in.  If you don't delete some 
files, you are probably going to lose data.

It is strongly recommended (although it's probably too late for you to
easily repartition) to separate your file system into several
partitions.  The root and /tmp files systems should be on one, the
/var file system probably another, and user and system files (that
don't change very quickly, usually) on another.  If you're running a
Web site or something where uploads permitted (this includes mail)
that should go with /var.  In general system-generated (log files, man
'cat' pages, TeX fonts) and uploaded files should be separated from
your /tmp file system; this allows critical functions to continue
working even if your log files overflow or something like that.

The Linux File System Standard has some comments on this, I believe.
But you basically have to decide what your own needs are.  I have
more than 10 partitions, of which about 6 are normally mounted.  The
others include swap and extra partitions for playing with new
distributions and so on.  I'm currently thinking about reorganizing
them yet again ... while I still have enough temporary space to
rationalize the file system by moving whole hierarchies.

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
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