Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 28 Jan 2003 15:10:23 -0500
From:      Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
To:        David.Bear@asu.edu
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Deleted files not releasing their space (was Re: syslog message wrt inodes)
Message-ID:  <3E36E3AF.8030201@potentialtech.com>
References:  <20030128093720.A26639@asu.edu>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
David Bear wrote:
> I'm getting messages like below that I'm out of inodes on /var.
> 
> asu.edu kernel log messages:
> 
>>id 25 on /var: out of inodes
>>  syslogd: /var/log/auth.log: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/maillog: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/cron: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/auth.log: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/maillog: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/cron: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/auth.log: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/maillog: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/cron: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/auth.log: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/maillog: No such file or directory
>>  syslogd: /var/log/cron: No such file or directory
> 
> 
> Filesystem  1K-blocks   Used   Avail Capacity iused  ifree %iused  Mounted on
> /dev/ad0s1a    128990  37232   81440    31%    1316  14938    8%   /
> /dev/ad0s1f    257998      4  237356     0%       2  32508    0%   /tmp
> /dev/ad0s1g   2341102 508366 1645448    24%   37711 256175   13%   /usr
> /dev/ad0s1e    257998  25572  211788    11%    8298  24212   26%   /var
> procfs              4      4       0   100%      25    507    5%   /proc
> 
> Last week my var volume did run out of inodes.  I erase some
> snort logs to free up the inodes.  But it appears the kernel or
> syslogd doesn't know about it.
> 
> any pointers on letting the kernel know I have enough inodes?

Let's see if I remember the details on this.
I believe this happens when a file is deleted, but another program still holds
a filehandle? to it.  Thus, if you delete Apache's log file (for example) but
don't restart Apache, the space the logfile is using isn't truely freed.
(This is why newsyslog.conf has a column for the PID of a process to restart).

So ... if you know which process had the files open, restart it (probably by
sending it a -HUP).

If you don't know, you can probably cheat and just reboot the machine, but that
shouldn't be necessary.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3E36E3AF.8030201>