HINT: Perhaps out of disk space? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Michael Adler
Subject HINT: Perhaps out of disk space?
Date
Msg-id 20051223163342.GB10148@pobox.com
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: HINT: Perhaps out of disk space?
List pgsql-general
I'm investigating a problem that happened last night and I would
appreciate any recommendations. The logs indicate that the disks were
full, but I truly doubt that since we only use about 14GB out of the
available 65GB.

I found entries like this in the logs:

ERROR:  could not write block 2354 of temporary file: No space left on device
HINT:  Perhaps out of disk space?
....
ERROR:  could not extend relation "parent_table": No space left on device
HINT:  Check free disk space.
....
LOG:  could not close temporary statistics file "/var/lib/postgres/data/global/pgstat.tmp.1464": No space left on
device

According to the logs, the problem went away after a reboot. I wonder
if the kernel or the RAID device got confused and postgres was simply
echoing what it was told. We run a couple hundred postgres servers and
we have not seen this before (except when the disks truly were full).

Everything is in the root filesystem, which has plenty of room.

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             67756724  14344392  49970408  23% /
tmpfs                  1034768         0   1034768   0% /dev/shm

PostgreSQL 7.4.7 on i386-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC i386-linux-gcc (GCC) 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-12)
Debian Sarge with Linux kernel 2.4.27-2-686-smp
Dell PowerEdge 1800
Dell MegaRAID PERC 4/DC RAID Controller, 128MB cache w/BBU
2x SEAGATE Cheetah 10K.7 ST373207LC in RAID 1 (mirroring)

Folks are a little jittery because our customers do very heavy
business this month and we don't want frantic support calls when we
should be drinking eggnog.

 -Mike

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