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All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

brianschrader.com

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Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#261

Post by twistedpair »

rgj wrote: post #79

In the mid nineties I worked in a research institute. There was a large shared Novell drive which was always on the verge of full. Almost every day we were asked to clean up our files as much as possible. There were no disc quota for some reason. One day I was working with my colleague and when the fileserver was full he went to a project folder and removed a file called balloon.txt which immediately freed up a few p…

I worked at a large company during a migration from Lotus to Outlook. We were told we'd get our current Lost email storage + 100MiB as a new email quota limit under Outlook.

I made a bunch of 100MiB files of `/dev/random` noise (so they don't compress, compressed size was part of the quota) and emailed them to myself before the migration, to get a few GiB of quota buffer.

My co-workers were constantly having to delete old emails in Outlook to stay under quota, but not me. I'd just delete one of my jumbo attachment emails, as needed. ;)

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#263

Post by Blikkentrekker »

> On Linux servers it can be incredibly difficult for any process to succeed if the disk is full. Copy commands and even deletions can fail or take forever as memory tries to swap to a full disk

I don't understand this. Swap is either a swap partition, or a specific swap file, all of which allocated in advance, so the fullness of the storage should have no bearing.

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#264

Post by Rule35 »

victor9000 wrote: post #163
rgj wrote: post #79

In the mid nineties I worked in a research institute. There was a large shared Novell drive which was always on the verge of full. Almost every day we were asked to clean up our files as much as possible. There were no disc quota for some reason. One day I was working with my colleague and when the fileserver was full he went to a project folder and removed a file called balloon.txt which immediately freed up a few p…

Perfect example of the tragedy of the commons. If individuals don't create these balloon files then they won't be able to use the file server when they need it, yet by creating these balloon files the collective action depletes the shared resource of its main function.

It's a decentralized implementation of a quota system.

By slowly releasing supply you prevent anyone having to self-regulate (which requires unreasonable deprivation, OR global knowledge) and everyone bases their decisions off of the only global signal, free space.

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#265

Post by mplewis »

dnautics wrote: post #193
0_____0 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

always fun when you're barreling down the highway and the engine starts to lean out, prompting you to hurriedly locate and switch the petcock over before the engine stalls completely. suppose then that you go fill up and forget to set the petcock back to normal. 8ball says: "I see a long walk in your future."

Surprised there isn't a mechanism that mechanically switches the petcock over when you put a fuel nozzle up to the port

Most motorcycles with a manual petcock are very manual in nature. Often this is to minimize the number of moving parts that could die on you if you take it into rural areas. An automatic petcock adds more complexity that could cause a malfunction.

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#266

Post by DevKoala »

frenchy wrote: post #251
xupybd wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite of private property ownership. Property ownership comes at a cost. That cost increases as supply dries up. In this case there is no cost to the individual, only to the group.

> Property ownership comes at a cost. Sort-of. Typically there is a cost associated with getting rights over a property, either by manufacturing, or in the case of land, by purchase or through the efforts of settling. However, once you have ownership of a property, it's usually relatively cheap to continue own (except, I suppose, if you consider the risk of a communist revolution or something). This is esentially how…

In California you pay ~1.5% in property taxes per year. Owning property is not cheap.

In fact you never really own it.

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#267

Post by abruzzi »

quesera wrote: post #217
dnautics wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised there isn't a mechanism that mechanically switches the petcock over when you put a fuel nozzle up to the port

Most motorcycles are surprisingly manual. This was originally a necessity (like in cars), but remains aesthetically preferable for many riders. OTOH, Honda Goldwings have stereo systems. They might grow an automatic fuel reserve switcher-backer someday too. :)

Fuel injected motorcycles don’t have reserve (at least, none that I’ve seen.) instead they have low fuel lights or full fuel gauges. I’m guessing it’s because the fuel pumps are in the tank and the fuel injection system needs high pressure.

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#268

Post by Blikkentrekker »

Yizahi wrote: post #239
scottlamb wrote: post #65

> On Linux servers it can be incredibly difficult for any process to succeed if the disk is full. Copy commands and even deletions can fail or take forever as memory tries to swap to a full disk and there's very little you can do to free up large chunks of space. This reasoning doesn't make sense. On Linux, swap is preallocated. This is true regardless of whether you're using a swap partition or a swap file. See man…

I've seen Linux systems simply crash when root partition was 100% full, though it was an embedded system, not representative to a big servers.

Define crash of a "system"?

Kernel panic? some user process you deem essential stopping?

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#269

Post by patrickserrano »

davidcollantes wrote: post #48
liaukovv wrote: post #33

I'm sorry for meta comment, but this font is barely readable.

Not just the font of choice, but the formatting (hanging indent?). It makes it harder to read when there is little volume of text.

Glad I wasn't the only one that found the indented paragraphs made it difficult to read.

Re: All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

#270

Post by geocrasher »

berkes wrote: post #260
dilyevsky wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setup proper monitoring and never get to the Real Issue to begin with. These sysadmin hacks are not helpful

"proper monitoring" is extremely broad. And, I would say, almost unreachable goal. You have it mail you when it goes over 80% disk usage (and what if you are on holiday)? Does it mail all colleagues? Who picks it up (I thought Bob picked it up, but Bob thought Anne picked it up. So no one did)? Does it come and wake you in person when it reaches 92%? Will this catch this async job that fails (but should never) in an…

> I've been doing a lot of hosting management and such. And there is one constant: all unforeseen issues are unforeseen.

I work in hosting too, and have been for a long time. I feel ya.

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