On Sun, May 09, 2010 at 07:39:01PM -0300, Crístian Viana wrote:
> what exactly is this reserved block count? is it about the number of inodes?
> does that mean that, by default, regular users can only use 95% of the
> inodes? and why did I use all these inodes? I don't think I have that many
> small files on this partition...
When the filesystem fills up, services can start failing left and
right because they cannot write logs, cannot write temp files, etc. At
this point human intervention is necessary: root has to log in and
clear out the disk. But if the $ROOT filesystem is completely full,
one may not even be able to log in and/or that one cannot do any sort
of maintenance that is needed. So you have some sort of circularity.
(In which case you have to reboot, perhaps using another medium...)
The way out is to reserve some breathing room for root so that when
everybody else is having problems he can still get in and fix the
problem.
The 5% is historical from days when disks are much smaller. If you
have a sensible partition scheme you only really need to reserve the
blocks on the $ROOT filesystem. If the partition in question (IIRC) is
only for /home, then you can just turn off the reserved blocks all
together.
Cheers,
W
--
Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire
et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
