Page 1 of 3
/dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 07:49
by RichoDemus
Hi, I was attempting to add a cronjob and got a "No space left on device" warning so I ran df and found this:
Code: Select all
user@b3:~/bin$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 9.9G 9.5G 0 100% /
tmpfs 252M 0 252M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 156K 9.9M 2% /dev
tmpfs 252M 4.0K 252M 1% /dev/shm
/dev/md0 907G 211G 650G 25% /home
overflow 1.0M 36K 988K 4% /tmp
How do I handle this, ie how do I find what files to delete etc, I'm guessing it's log files?
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 09:09
by DanielM
Try this:
Might give some hints.
/Daniel
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 09:28
by RandomUsername
Yeah, something's wrong if the / has filled up. It's a good bet something had gone haywire and wrote a massive log file.
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 09:31
by RichoDemus
my /var/log is only 13 megabytes, I think the culprit is elsewhere
I did
but the only large files I found were in /home which is on another disk
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 12:17
by DanielM
Sometimes it's easier to take one level at the time. Something like "du -h --max-depth=1 /" first and then continue down to the largest directory.
/Daniel
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 12:31
by RichoDemus
I found it!
I have 32k files in /var/spool/postfix/maildrop and it's 7.8 gigabytes
-rwxr--r-- 1 root postdrop 245828 Jul 8 09:40 36B4735D93
-rwxr--r-- 1 root postdrop 245828 Apr 13 17:25 36B6E306C4
-rwxr--r-- 1 root postdrop 245828 May 9 04:50 36B7B1A1CC
-rwxr--r-- 1 root postdrop 245828 Apr 14 21:40 36B9A30820
-rwxr--r-- 1 root postdrop 245828 Apr 15 21:55 36BCD30957
-rwxr--r-- 1 root postdrop 245828 May 31 01:30 36BD83303F
-rwxr--r-- 1 root postdrop 245828 Jun 29 22:35 36BE635412
I'm guessing these are unsent emails? can I view them somehow? are they safe to delete?
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 12:36
by RandomUsername
I think you can view them with the "mail" command. Could be errors created by a cron job or something.
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 25 Sep 2012, 13:24
by DanielM
RichoDemus wrote:I have 32k files in /var/spool/postfix/maildrop and it's 7.8 gigabytes
I think that directory is supposed to be empty, sounds to me like mail that should be delivered somewhere but has stuck. What do you get when running "mailq"?
/Daniel
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 26 Sep 2012, 03:17
by RichoDemus
running sudo mailq gives me thousands of lines:
Code: Select all
C80B4307E7 245828 Sat Apr 14 14:55:02 root
root
DD4FC303CB 245828 Wed Apr 11 00:05:02 root
root
6B422724A9 245828 Mon May 14 23:05:03 root
root
4C476371AA 245828 Mon Sep 17 21:35:06 root
root
A16BB327C6 245828 Wed May 23 10:20:02 root
root
Is there a way to see the contents of these files? running mail as root simply gives me "no mail for root"
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 26 Sep 2012, 03:32
by DanielM
RichoDemus wrote:Is there a way to see the contents of these files? running mail as root simply gives me "no mail for root"
Those messages are stuck in the queue. For some reason postfix doesn't know what to do with them.
I don't really know what the default config is, but I've set up an alias so mail destinated for root ends up in my "normal" users mailbox instead. I've just added a line in my /etc/postfix/virtual for this, though I don't know if this is correct for you. Check "man 5 virtual" for a description about what to do.
/Daniel
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 26 Sep 2012, 13:22
by nobody
Pleas run
to clean the messages. They contain only stats and log data.
Then edit
and alter the last line of that file. You need to enter a avlid mail address here, or a username that can receive mail.
Now run
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 27 Sep 2012, 06:46
by RichoDemus
It seems like postfix had stopped working which is why the queue kept getting bigger. I started it again after deleting the emails and now everything works.
But it seems like the whole email system is pretty messed up at the moment, I tried sending an email to myself:
Code: Select all
root@b3:/# mail -s asdf root
Cc:
test
root@b3:/# mail
No mail for root
root@b3:/#
mail.log says
Code: Select all
Sep 27 12:40:37 b3 postfix/pickup[6357]: B51163022E: uid=0 from=<root>
Sep 27 12:40:37 b3 postfix/cleanup[6518]: B51163022E: message-id=<20120927104037.B51163022E@b3.localdomain>
Sep 27 12:40:37 b3 postfix/qmgr[25517]: B51163022E: from=<root@b3.localdomain>, size=332, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep 27 12:40:37 b3 postfix/local[6520]: B51163022E: to=<richo@b3.localdomain>, orig_to=<root@b3>, relay=local, delay=0.08, delays=0.01/0/0/0.06, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered to maildir)
Sep 27 12:40:37 b3 postfix/qmgr[25517]: B51163022E: removed
I have never used mail/sendmail/postix before, am I missing something?
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 27 Sep 2012, 11:45
by Gordon
The mail command uses a different concept. The B3 is configured to use the IMAP maildir format for use with Dovecot and places incoming emails in ~/Mail/new. You need an IMAP compatible application to access the email, but of course root is not permitted to log in to Horde (I'm not sure if it's Horde or Dovecot blocking the login).
Good for pointing this out. I had literally tens of thousands of emails from the cron daemon in roots mailbox from the Horde alarm script. I've added an alias for root now that points to user admin so I can actually read those messages and act on them if required.
Thank you very much.
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 27 Sep 2012, 15:16
by nobody
The whole issue here is that, with maildir, root is not permitted to receive mail at all. That i why the mail is stuck. The postfix installer is quite lear on this topic.
Re: /dev/sda1 is full, what can I clean?
Posted: 28 Sep 2012, 01:51
by Gordon
nobody wrote:The whole issue here is that, with maildir, root is not permitted to receive mail at all. That i why the mail is stuck. The postfix installer is quite lear on this topic.
That doesn't conform with what I'm seeing. The only issue is that there is no commandline routine to read those emails (that I know of). In any case, the command `mail` reads the content of /var/mail/$USER which stays empty if you use maildir. So that's why it insists that there is no mail.