*BSD News Article 60172


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From: james@parody.tecc.co.uk (James Raynard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: HELP!
Date: 25 Jan 1996 23:59:01 -0000
Organization: A FreeBSD box
Lines: 38
Message-ID: <4e95g5$38u@parody.tecc.co.uk>
References: <4e33uh$njd@news-2.csn.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost

In article <4e33uh$njd@news-2.csn.net>,
Poisoned <poisoned@ix.pcc.cccoes.edu> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I was hoping that someone could help me with a FreeBSD newbie
>question.  I have been running FreeBSD for quite some time and now I
>when I reboot the system I get this error:
>login: Jan 23 09:55:53 ix /kernel: uid 0 on /: file system full

This means that there at least 95% of the root file system is used and
that root is the only user who can write on it. A common cause is that
the log files under /var have grown too large and need trimming; this is
one of the reasons why a separate /var partition is often recommended.
Another possibility is that a temporary file under /tmp has grown to a
size where it is taking too much space. However, as you get the message
at boot time and /tmp gets emptied during the boot process, this won't
be relevant here.

Generally, it's a good idea to keep as few files as possible in the root
file system; the only ones which are really essential are ones which are
needed during booting, such as the kernel and the configuration files in
/etc.

>I have checked my resources with the df command and it shows the
>following.

Another useful tool is du, for example

# cd /
# du -sx *

will show you which of the files/directories on the root filesystem is 
being greedy. If necessary, you can walk down the filesystem and repeat
the process, in order to isolate the culprit.

James
-- 
Segmentation fault (core dumped): cannot find file '.signature'