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It's been happening for the last few weeks in a small unix server (it doesn't have all standard unix commands, just the basics included in the BusyBox package) that I was configuring to backup files.

If we check the free space of the server it shows:

 Filesystem             |   Size  |    Used | Available | Use%| Mounted on
 /dev/hdc2              | 678.4G  |  416.6G |   261.8G  | 61% | /tmp/mnt/D
 /dev/sda1              |  96.1G  |   36.0G |    55.2G  | 40% | /tmp/mnt/USB/USB_C

Now I am trying to copy either a 700MB files to USB_C or a 90GB files to /tmp/mnt/D where I can see that there's plenty of space available, however, I keep on receiving the followin error:

cp: Write Error: No space left on device

Any idea what the problem could be and how it could be fixed?

As mentioned, this is a small unix server with the bare minimum of unix commands, so most of the commands mentioned in other posts do NOT work for this box. Hence that I might need the help of someone who knows what I could try in this specific system to give us some clue...

mickael
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1 Answers1

3

My gut reaction says inodes

Check your inodes. Those are the hidden part of the filesystem that keeps metadata about the files.

df -i

I suspect you may have many, many small files. If that's the case -- and note that each file needs an inode -- you can use up inodes before you use up actual storage space.

JDS
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