From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Dec 22 17:15:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from rwcrmhc53.attbi.com (rwcrmhc53.attbi.com [204.127.198.39]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 425DA37B405 for ; Sat, 22 Dec 2001 17:15:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from attbi.com ([12.254.218.32]) by rwcrmhc53.attbi.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP id <20011223011523.BSCT20122.rwcrmhc53.attbi.com@attbi.com>; Sun, 23 Dec 2001 01:15:23 +0000 Message-ID: <3C252FE7.79443B86@attbi.com> Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 18:14:15 -0700 From: Joe Warner Organization: nunyabiz X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Brooks Davis Cc: Doug White , stable@FreeBSD.ORG, David Wolfskill , Gunnar Flygt Subject: Re: IT'S FIXED!! Whew! (was:Make Installworld fills up / ...help!) References: <3C22915C.F31E2C61@attbi.com> <20011220174037.A1142@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <3C2294FE.CB900677@attbi.com> <20011220180038.A3775@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <3C24B0B9.2597A8D9@attbi.com> <20011222162056.A28561@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------0D3C0915C95871DF5B70F26C" Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG --------------0D3C0915C95871DF5B70F26C Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brooks Davis wrote: > On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 09:11:37AM -0700, Joe Warner wrote: > > OK, what Brooks recommended below ended up being the > > culprit/solution to my woes! Luckily, 'cat' was the only > > program that got whacked and I was able to continue with > > 'make installworld' from where I left off. > > > > The question still remains: "How did this happen to begin with? > > ..and is it documented anywhere? > > I'm not sure if this is all that well documented, but the issue is that > you ran out of space on /. This happens to people when they are either > running with soft updates of their / partition is too small. The > default has been raised in current, and I think in stable, but this is > an ongoing issue. Here's my educated guess of what happened: 1. I chose the 'A' option when setting up my slices during the initial install. IMO, this makes the / slice way too small, especially for a desktop configuration (XFree86 + KDE, Gnome, Blackbox, + related/assorted apps) 2. Some time ago, my / slice filled up and I spent over a week trying to figure out what was using up the space. I was unable to determine the exact cause, so out of utter desperation, I cleared out /tmp, checked /root and deleted kernel.old and modules.old. This brought / down to 89% 3. While describing #2 to a friend on IRC, it was recommended that I delete /tmp and then link it to /usr/tmp However, I wasn't told to do this in single user and I did it wrong. After deleting /tmp, I linked it with 'ln -s /tmp /usr/tmp' which was wrong. I should have booted to single user, moved everything in /tmp to /usr/tmp, deleted it with 'rmdir /tmp' and then linked it with 'ln -s /usr/tmp /tmp' 4. (This one should give everyone a chuckle) I discovered this morning that the main cause of my recent woes was the odd presence of RUSH' La Villa Strangiato.mp3 in /dev Don't ask me how it got there. I remember this file being in my home directory a while ago, so it's not like I was 0wn3d and someone deliberately put it in /dev So, it seems to me that #4 was the direct cause because it made / go to 106% during 'make installworld' After installworld errored out saying that / was full, that's when I started having problems and couldn't continue on with the upgrade. It turned out that the 'cat' command had somehow gone AWOL and prevented the upgrade process from continuing. #1-3 didn't help things either but when combined with #4, it made for a fine day at the looney bin. > > > I wonder if we should consider adding a check to > installworld/installkernel to refuse to install on very small / > partitions since the failure mode is really ugly (losing files in /bin > or /sbin). I think that would certainly help. When I first installed FreeBSD, I was fairly new to it and didn't know better than selecting 'A' when setting up my slices. I certainly plan to manually configure my slices the next time but for the sake of curiosity, why is the 'A' option set to make the / slice so small in the first place? > > > The only real solution to your space problems is to reparition. You > might be able to find other temporary solutions, but in the end, that's > it. If you do it, I recommend using at least 100MB for / and I'd > probably suggest 150MB for plenty of margin (I use 256MB, but I want > room for several sets of debug kernels and modules.) Agreed, I'm hoping Santa will bring me a bigger hard drive on Tuesday and if that happens, I definitely plan to do a fresh install of 4.4 and will set my slices correctly. I took the week between Christmas and New Years off, so I'll have plenty of time to play. 8^) Thanks again and Merry Christmas! Joe > > > -- Brooks > > -- > Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE. > PGP fingerprint 655D 519C 26A7 82E7 2529 9BF0 5D8E 8BE9 F238 1AD4 > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature -- Joe Warner Daemon News Daemon News E-Zine http://www.daemonnews.org Print Magazine http://magazine.daemonnews.org/ BSDMall http://www.bsdmall.com --------------0D3C0915C95871DF5B70F26C Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brooks Davis wrote:
On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 09:11:37AM -0700, Joe Warner wrote:
> OK, what Brooks recommended below ended up being the
> culprit/solution to my woes!  Luckily, 'cat' was the only
> program that got whacked and I was able to continue with
> 'make installworld' from where I left off.
>
> The question still remains: "How did this happen to begin with?
> ..and is it documented anywhere?

I'm not sure if this is all that well documented, but the issue is that
you ran out of space on /.  This happens to people when they are either
running with soft updates of their / partition is too small.  The
default has been raised in current, and I think in stable, but this is
an ongoing issue.

Here's my educated guess of what happened:

1.  I chose the 'A' option when setting up my slices during the initial install.
      IMO, this makes the / slice way too small, especially for a desktop
      configuration (XFree86 + KDE, Gnome, Blackbox, + related/assorted apps)

2.  Some time ago, my / slice filled up and I spent over a week trying to figure out
      what was using up the space.  I was unable to determine the exact cause, so
      out of utter desperation, I cleared out /tmp, checked /root and deleted kernel.old
      and modules.old.  This brought / down to 89%

3.  While describing #2 to a friend on IRC, it was recommended that I delete /tmp and
      then link it to /usr/tmp  However, I wasn't told to do this in single user and I did
      it wrong.  After deleting /tmp, I linked it with 'ln -s /tmp /usr/tmp' which was
     wrong.  I should have booted to single user, moved everything in /tmp to
     /usr/tmp, deleted it with 'rmdir /tmp' and then linked it with 'ln -s /usr/tmp /tmp'

4.  (This one should give everyone a chuckle) I discovered this morning that the
     main cause of my recent woes was the odd presence of RUSH' La Villa Strangiato.mp3
     in /dev  Don't ask me how it got there.  I remember this file being in my home
     directory a while ago, so it's not like I was 0wn3d and someone deliberately put
     it in /dev

So, it seems to me that #4 was the direct cause because it made / go to 106% during
'make installworld'  After installworld errored out saying that / was full, that's when
I started having problems and couldn't continue on with the upgrade.  It turned out
that the 'cat' command had somehow gone AWOL and prevented the upgrade
process from continuing.  #1-3 didn't help things either but when combined with
#4, it made for a fine day at the looney bin.

 

I wonder if we should consider adding a check to
installworld/installkernel to refuse to install on very small /
partitions since the failure mode is really ugly (losing files in /bin
or /sbin).

I think that would certainly help.  When I first installed FreeBSD,
I was fairly new to it and didn't know better than selecting 'A'
when setting up my slices.  I certainly plan to manually configure
my slices the next time but for the sake of curiosity, why is the
'A' option set to make the / slice so small in the first place?
 

The only real solution to your space problems is to reparition.  You
might be able to find other temporary solutions, but in the end, that's
it.  If you do it, I recommend using at least 100MB for / and I'd
probably suggest 150MB for plenty of margin (I use 256MB, but I want
room for several sets of debug kernels and modules.)

Agreed, I'm hoping Santa will bring me a bigger hard drive on Tuesday
and if that happens, I definitely plan to do a fresh install of 4.4 and will
set my slices correctly.  I took the week between Christmas and New
Years off, so I'll have plenty of time to play.  8^)

Thanks again and Merry Christmas!

Joe
 

 

-- Brooks

--
Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
PGP fingerprint 655D 519C 26A7 82E7 2529  9BF0 5D8E 8BE9 F238 1AD4

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature

-- 
Joe Warner
Daemon News
Daemon News E-Zine http://www.daemonnews.org
Print Magazine http://magazine.daemonnews.org/
BSDMall http://www.bsdmall.com
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