[LUNI] Disk full, but not really

[Ramin K]

Branko Kotur wrote:
> I've noticed that when the hard drive starts filling up, about 10% is left in 
> reserve so that regular users can't use it.  In other words, take the 
> following df output for example:
> 
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda2             9.9G  4.2G  5.3G  44% /
> /dev/hda1             145M   19M  119M  14% /boot
> /dev/hda6              61G   52G  6.2G  90% /home
> /dev/hda5            1012M   38M  923M   4% /tmp
> 
> /home obviously isn't full, but since it's at 90%, the user is not able to add 
> new files.  Only root can.  Is there a way to disable this behavior?  I 
> realize this isn't smart if the drive isn't partitioned, but since the /home 
> is on a seperate partition, I don't see any danger at this point.  Quotas are 
> enabled, but I've never played with them very much, so I don't know if 
> they're what's causing this.
> 
> Does linux do this by default or did some software on the server implement 
> this?  

You can mess with the limit using e2fsprogs, I forget the details, but 
you start to lose performance in significant ways if the file system 
does not have extra space to work in. I would suggest getting more disk 
as a simpler and ultimately cheaper solution.

Ramin