5 ms·

Ah, the classic 'speed-up loop' approach: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop About the blogpos

Ah, the classic 'speed-up loop' approach: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop About the blogpost itself: The disk filled up, and that's one thing you don't want on a Linux server—or a Mac for that matter. When the disk is full nothing good happens. 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. What is the proper way of dealing with such issue on macOS? (or other systems, if they behave the same way)

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
I don't know with Mac, but this is why many Linux distros recommend putting /home is on a separate partition. If it fills, it won't lock up the whole system. Fun story with this. Ubuntu now has an experimental root-on-zfs feature. I installed it and started playing with some docker containers, trying to compile a certain version of pytorch. Suddenly, my computer crashed. Apparently, my root partition filled because docker installed everything on the same partition as my OS, crashing everything immediately.
ghostly_s 6y ago
MacOS has given the user nagging "startup disk is almost full " prompts for as long as I can remember, yours doesn't?
- dylan604 6y ago
  And users have been ignoring that message as long as MacOS has been giving them. Maybe even longer
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    I even hacked my MacOS to disable the message. Computers shouldn't nag their owners repeatedly, even if it's in their best interest, unless the computer is about to catch fire.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      Wouldn't it be better to take the system's advice and clear off some space rather than playing russian roulette? I've had the mispleasure of pointing a large video export to the wrong drive and other misdeeds that allowed a drive to fill up. It's not pleasant. A simple reboot sometimes frees up the swap space to allow for more spring cleaning, but I typically just resort to booting into recovery mode and searching the web for the proper terminal command to decrypt/mount the root volume for spring cleaning.
whartung 6y ago
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." This wasn't from the Finder, this was command line rm. On the Mac it's also exacerbated by the fact that swap will use the system drive and can fill up the disk, and can not be stopped. If you have some rogue process consuming RAM, among other things, your disk will suffer until it is full. And, as mentioned, macOS does not behave well with a full disk. And, even if you've remedied the swap issue (i.e. killed the process), there's no way I know to recover the swap files created without restarting. Just seems like the design is trouble waiting to happen, and it has happened to me. When this last happened, somehow it managed to corrupt my external Time Machine volume.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  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.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    > 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.
- godshatter 6y ago
  I'm guessing that rm is trying to update the metadata for the file which is what is actually failing because of a lack of disk space.
hackmiester 6y ago
I ran into this on OpenWRT back in the day. It had a similar filesystem behavior where you could not delete from a full FS. The solution was to truncate a file that was at least 1 block big, thus freeing up a few kilobytes. Then you can rm a large file, and then you can resume normal cleanup.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago

I don't know with Mac, but this is why many Linux distros recommend putting /home is on a separate partition. If it fills, it won't lock up the whole system. Fun story with this. Ubuntu now has an experimental root-on-zfs feature. I installed it and started playing with some docker containers, trying to compile a certain version of pytorch. Suddenly, my computer crashed. Apparently, my root partition filled because docker installed everything on the same partition as my OS, crashing everything immediately.

ghostly_s 6y ago

MacOS has given the user nagging "startup disk is almost full " prompts for as long as I can remember, yours doesn't?

dylan604 6y ago
And users have been ignoring that message as long as MacOS has been giving them. Maybe even longer
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  I even hacked my MacOS to disable the message. Computers shouldn't nag their owners repeatedly, even if it's in their best interest, unless the computer is about to catch fire.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Wouldn't it be better to take the system's advice and clear off some space rather than playing russian roulette? I've had the mispleasure of pointing a large video export to the wrong drive and other misdeeds that allowed a drive to fill up. It's not pleasant. A simple reboot sometimes frees up the swap space to allow for more spring cleaning, but I typically just resort to booting into recovery mode and searching the web for the proper terminal command to decrypt/mount the root volume for spring cleaning.

whartung 6y ago

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." This wasn't from the Finder, this was command line rm. On the Mac it's also exacerbated by the fact that swap will use the system drive and can fill up the disk, and can not be stopped. If you have some rogue process consuming RAM, among other things, your disk will suffer until it is full. And, as mentioned, macOS does not behave well with a full disk. And, even if you've remedied the swap issue (i.e. killed the process), there's no way I know to recover the swap files created without restarting. Just seems like the design is trouble waiting to happen, and it has happened to me. When this last happened, somehow it managed to corrupt my external Time Machine volume.

sillysaurusx 6y ago
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.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > 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.
godshatter 6y ago
I'm guessing that rm is trying to update the metadata for the file which is what is actually failing because of a lack of disk space.

hackmiester 6y ago

I ran into this on OpenWRT back in the day. It had a similar filesystem behavior where you could not delete from a full FS. The solution was to truncate a file that was at least 1 block big, thus freeing up a few kilobytes. Then you can rm a large file, and then you can resume normal cleanup.