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All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

brianschrader.com

361–370 of 715 posts

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

#361
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoarders will buy the rest of it. During the 2-month lockdown a year ago, I would purchase 4 frozen pizzas at a time when I had a chance to buy them, because I was so upset that I could not buy one when I wanted a single one during the 2 previous weeks, because of hoarders who had been faster than me. People think of toilet papers, but it is not just that. Pasta, rice, flour, yeast, plenty of useful things went missi…

I noticed a weird thing here. All the regular pasta rapidly disappeared. Rice also was gone. But "Gluten Free"(I am a GFer) pasta - in this case, pasta made from rice - was fine! I amused myself with the idea that people:"would rather starve to death than eat that GF crap." :-)

Pasta didn't sell out because people were afraid of starving.

Pasta sold out because people didn't know how to cook anything else themselves.

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

#362
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is similar to how some government agencies retain their budgets. At the end of the budget period they've only spent 80% of their allocated budget, so they throw out a bunch of perfectly good equipment/furniture/etc. and order new stuff so that their budget doesn't get cut the following year, rather than accepting that maybe they were over-budgeted to begin with. Rinse, repeat, thus continuing the cycle of wastin…

Bunks only go up.

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

#363
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is similar to how some government agencies retain their budgets. At the end of the budget period they've only spent 80% of their allocated budget, so they throw out a bunch of perfectly good equipment/furniture/etc. and order new stuff so that their budget doesn't get cut the following year, rather than accepting that maybe they were over-budgeted to begin with. Rinse, repeat, thus continuing the cycle of wastin…

Government?

I see that as the SOP for large companies too...

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

#364
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still know people that pre-emptively buy toilet paper "because hoarders might buy the rest of it" with absolutely no introspection.

Hoarders will buy the rest of it. During the 2-month lockdown a year ago, I would purchase 4 frozen pizzas at a time when I had a chance to buy them, because I was so upset that I could not buy one when I wanted a single one during the 2 previous weeks, because of hoarders who had been faster than me. People think of toilet papers, but it is not just that. Pasta, rice, flour, yeast, plenty of useful things went missi…

Is fish not considered meat?

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

#365

All my servers have an alarm when disk space goes above 70%. It sends an email every hour once the disk usage goes above 70%. Never had a server go down because of disk space issue after adopting this practise. Also one of the main reasons server disks go full is generally log files. Always remember to "logrotate" your log files and you will not have this issue that much. Yes one more thing, for all user uploaded fil…

Is there a package I can install to set this up?

I see Chris Siebenmann (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/) blog about Prometheus (https://prometheus.io/) often. It seems quite capable of this and a lot more complex alerts.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's morally incorrect to get to the license server early and snatch a roaming license you might not use to its fullest, is it not also wrong to access the property market early and snatch a bunch of land you might not use to its fullest?

The difference is that market mechanisms are meant to allocate items to those that value them the most (assumed to be the same as their willingness to pay). Claiming a licence by contrast has little cost.

In reality it's not the person that values it the most, but the person willing to pay the most money. That's not the same even if we ignore the ability to afford something, because the marginal value of money isn't constant: To a millionaire $80 is much less than for someone earning minimum wage.

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

#367
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…

Same thing happens with floating licenses, if they are too scarce, people open the program first thing in the morning ‘just in case’ and keep a license reserved all day.

The real game starts when people run infinite while/for loops that try to check out one as soon as it's available. Or run useless operations within the licensed software just so that that the license doesn't expire and return to the pool. I'm guilty of both, sadly. In an academic environment, additional resources aren't going to fall from the sky.

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

#369

[flagged]

If a scarce resource is rationed and allocated according to need, some people will misrepresent their need to get more of it. This is hardly a feature of capitalism. It's a feature of centralised resource allocation.

For example, I'm thinking of a phenomenon in the Soviet Union where people would buy a rare good not because they needed it, but because they could trade it for another shortage good they could not get.

There are tons of small anecdotes about similar abuses of resource allocation. I remember reading that Red Army officers misreported casualties to receive the pay and rations of dead soldiers.

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

#370
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed a weird thing here. All the regular pasta rapidly disappeared. Rice also was gone. But "Gluten Free"(I am a GFer) pasta - in this case, pasta made from rice - was fine! I amused myself with the idea that people:"would rather starve to death than eat that GF crap." :-)

Pasta didn't sell out because people were afraid of starving. Pasta sold out because people didn't know how to cook anything else themselves.

They can cook, but they can’t be arsed to.
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