*BSD News Article 52128


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From: chet@clavelle.INS.CWRU.Edu (Chet Ramey)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: Disk full errors
Date: 3 Oct 1995 15:28:05 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Lines: 46
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <44rkq5$h80@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
References: <davidp-2909951437400001@mac219.admin.biola.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: clavelle.ins.cwru.edu
Keywords: inn news bsdi
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au news.software.nntp:16215 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:1038

In article <davidp-2909951437400001@mac219.admin.biola.edu>,
David Pisoni <davidp@leonardo.net> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I am running INN on a BSDI 2.0 system.
>Lately our INN has been reporting some strange disk full errors.  From the
>daily news report :
>
>Disk usage:
>/dev/sd0e      3220914  2431678   467144    84%    /usr/var/spool/news
>/dev/sd1a      1388078   164578  1154096    12%    /usr/local/news
>
>Seems like lots of space....
>
>but then later in the report:
>
>sort: No space left on device

It doesn't have anything to do with how much spool space you have
available.

/usr/contrib/lib/news/bin/news.daily, when run with the `delayrm'
option, wants to sort the file of articles to be removed
(/var/log/news/expire.rm).  It calls `sort', which uses $TMPDIR to
decide where to put its temp files.  TMPDIR is one of the variables
set in /usr/contrib/lib/news/innshellvars, which sets it to `/tmp'
by default.  The upshot is that `sort' is using /tmp to sort a
(presumably) large file, and running out of space on that filesystem.

You can do several things:

1.  Set TMPDIR to /var/tmp and export it at the top of news.daily, before
    the `.' command that reads innshellvars.

2.  Change /usr/contrib/lib/news/innshellvars so that it unconditionally
    sets TMPDIR to /var/tmp.

3.  Change news.daily to call sort like this:

	TMPDIR=/var/tmp sort -o ${RMFILE} ${RMFILE}


-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer

Chet Ramey, Case Western Reserve University	Internet: chet@po.CWRU.Edu