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All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

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

#571

Post by ike77 »

herbcso wrote: post #507
Aeolun wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that you do not need 100% of your budget every year, but getting it back when you do need it is much harder than keeping it in the first place. Definite case of misaligned incentives.

I've never understood this about budgeting. So you allocate. A budget. These are fund YOU ARE PLANNING TO SPEND! So, OK, you DON'T spend them this year. Why the fuck don't you get to SAVE THAT MONEY!? No, instead you are punished for now spending it all and you cannot create a realistic budget for next year - why the hell not!? Sorry, but this frustrates the hell out of me! What am I missing here? What arcane bit of…

For two reasons:

1) separation of duty: you might not be the best department to invest surplus

2) cost effectiveness: if you're operating with a deficit, as is generally the case with governments these days, this money is not free, so it could effectively be cheaper to give it back and re-borrow it when you actually need it

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

#572

Post by masklinn »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #528
whartung wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this happen few times on a Mac and every time I was shocked that if disk gets full you cannot even delete a file and the only option is to do a full system reboot. I was also unable to save any open file, even to external disk and suffered minor data loss every time due to that. This just happened to me. I got the best error message I've ever seen. Something akin to "Can not remove file because the disk is full…

I've been living with this for the past few years. The only remedy is to do a full system reboot. Sometimes I reboot a few times a night. One way to buy yourself some time is to disable the sleep file. I'm not sure what it's called -- it's a file that MacOS uses to let the computer hibernate when there's no power. It's a few GB, which (like the blog post stated) is a nontrivial amount of freeable space.

> I'm not sure what it's called -- it's a file that MacOS uses to let the computer hibernate when there's no power. It's a few GB, which (like the blog post stated) is a nontrivial amount of freeable space.

Should be /var/vm/sleepimage and the same size as your RAM.

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

#573

Post by batpangolin »

cassepipe wrote: post #357
nostrademons wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really irrational or some behavior that they'd change if they did introspect. I suspect a significant portion of these people are internally like "Yeah, I'm part of the problem now, but the problem is not going to go away if I don't join in on it, I'll just get screwed." In other words, they understand game theory and tragedy of the commons.

Yes but you have to recognize that there is something irrational in the perception of the problem. How do you go from -> a lot of fragile and old people are going to die to -> omg I am going to be starved to death ?

I think there were two fears. One is that you might want to stay in your house for a long time without having to go and get groceries. Either because you are quarantining, or because you're very afraid of catching a dangerous virus if you go out. Having plenty of food in the house could be the difference between having to take a risk and avoiding that risk.

Secondly I think a lot of people worried, rationally or not, about a 'breakdown of society'. If there is enough death and disease then maybe everything stops working. People don't go to work, transport and food production break down, there is looting and widespread lawlessness, and so on. Perhaps it's very hard to get food, or impossible to get some foods, or some form of government rationing starts. In that case having a stockpile could be very valuable.

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

#574

Post by klarstrup »

ycombinete wrote: post #518
eevilspock wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tragedy of the Commons is the libertarian "private property is essential" interpretation. It's a cynical take, assuming that human selfishness is the deepest of truths and that there is no use fighting it, that the best solution is to organize society around it. The conventional Game Theory take is that this is a prisoners dilemma, and everyone creating balloon.txt files are defecting. They are making the most ration…

It’s not just libertarians. I’m sure that even communists accept the premise of human self interest, but instead of private property their solution is for one all powerful government to own everything

glance over a stirner summary i beg you

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

#575

Post by Kiro »

t0mmel wrote: post #535

What I don’t understand about this approach is why you think it actually does anything for you ? What you do instead of this is to setup an alert to monitor disk space at the right threshold for you, and then have a contingency plan for how to add more space to your environment. It seems like you have sort of done that, but in this case you are actually allowing your system to get into a bad state before you react. P…

Setting up alarms sounds complicated. I don't want to deal with that.

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

#576

Post by skytreader »

Oh man, reminds me of a Game Dev war story I read years ago. This purportedly happened in those console days with very limited memory capabilities.

In some game studio, as a project neared its release, the team was still struggling with memory issues. No matter what they did, they had a surplus of just about 2MB. The artists have reduced their polygon counts drastically, the programmers have checked every possible leak, have optimized algorithms and buffers the best they could but the 2MB surplus just kept haunting them.

That's when the VP of Engineering stepped-in. Calling the TL of the project into a closed-doors optimization code-review, they had the source code on a large screen and the TL talked the VP through everything the team has done so far to stay within the memory budget.

As the TL finished the walkthrough, the VP opens some mother-of-all files and deletes a cryptic variable declaration to the effect of:

  int toLiveBuffer[2000000];
The VP then explains that he hid this declaration in their codebase after a project that had to optimize drastically late into the development cycle. But first he wanted to make sure that the team did their homework.

And poof. They emerge from the closed-doors meeting jubilant and victorious. The game is ready for prime time!

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

#577

Post by nickpp »

eevilspock wrote: post #447
victor9000 wrote: post #163

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.

Tragedy of the Commons is the libertarian "private property is essential" interpretation. It's a cynical take, assuming that human selfishness is the deepest of truths and that there is no use fighting it, that the best solution is to organize society around it. The conventional Game Theory take is that this is a prisoners dilemma, and everyone creating balloon.txt files are defecting. They are making the most ration…

> we need to get beyond such limited thinking. We need to transcend our base natures

Refusing to accept the human nature as-is and always requiring some sort of "evolved new man" is one of the characteristics of the communist/socialist ideology.

Also a handy excuse when the system inevitably fails: it wasn't the system, it was the selfish people who did not implement it correctly.

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

#578

Post by alfiedotwtf »

skytreader wrote: post #576

Oh man, reminds me of a Game Dev war story I read years ago. This purportedly happened in those console days with very limited memory capabilities. In some game studio, as a project neared its release, the team was still struggling with memory issues. No matter what they did, they had a surplus of just about 2MB. The artists have reduced their polygon counts drastically, the programmers have checked every possible le…

... sounds like a dailywtf post :)

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

#579

Post by littlestymaar »

ike77 wrote: post #571
herbcso wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this about budgeting. So you allocate. A budget. These are fund YOU ARE PLANNING TO SPEND! So, OK, you DON'T spend them this year. Why the fuck don't you get to SAVE THAT MONEY!? No, instead you are punished for now spending it all and you cannot create a realistic budget for next year - why the hell not!? Sorry, but this frustrates the hell out of me! What am I missing here? What arcane bit of…

For two reasons: 1) separation of duty: you might not be the best department to invest surplus 2) cost effectiveness: if you're operating with a deficit, as is generally the case with governments these days, this money is not free, so it could effectively be cheaper to give it back and re-borrow it when you actually need it

> 1) separation of duty: you might not be the best department to invest surplus

But with this reasoning there is no surplus, because departments will spend their money at all cost.

> 2) cost effectiveness: if you're operating with a deficit, as is generally the case with governments these days, this money is not free, so it could effectively be cheaper to give it back and re-borrow it when you actually need it

That's totally fine, when GP said “Save the money” they didn't meant “on their own bank account”. It just means: the top management owe them this money when they'll need it later.

Anecdote: I'm currently working on a project started in emergency earlier this month, which must be done before the end of the month (because it's the end of the accounting year at this company) for this exact reason. And this project is overprices by a factor close to two, because this money really had to be spent!

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

#580

Post by littlestymaar »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #554
herbcso wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this about budgeting. So you allocate. A budget. These are fund YOU ARE PLANNING TO SPEND! So, OK, you DON'T spend them this year. Why the fuck don't you get to SAVE THAT MONEY!? No, instead you are punished for now spending it all and you cannot create a realistic budget for next year - why the hell not!? Sorry, but this frustrates the hell out of me! What am I missing here? What arcane bit of…

If you don't reduce your budget next year, what does "save that money" mean to a department in a company? If this year I have 105% of last year's budget (because they always go up), what am I supposed to do with the 20% surplus from last year? Most companies wouldn't even have a place in your cost center to track a surplus, it's such a foreign concept. Zero based budgeting is one answer to the moral hazards of either…

> (because they always go up)

Ahah, that would be nice. In most company I know, they are shrinking every years, because you know, “cost reduction plans”.

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