Linux 9.0 - ext3 filesystem - No space left on device

[LimJim]

Hi,

I found a problem with Linux 7.3 and 9.0 ext3 filesystem.

After creating a 20M ext3 filesystem, I begin to copy files into this mounted filesystem. If I kept overwritting these files, the system will prompt an error "No space left on device". This happens on version 7.3 redhat too.

The problem doesn't happen with ext2 filesystem.

Could anyone help to give some answer as how to solve this problem.

 

[thedaver]

ext3 is a journaling file system, whereby a seperate journal is kept on the partition that keeps track of file pointers, etc. This journaling is the advantage in secure operation and rapid recovery of the file system.

It appears that your 20MB "partition" is too small once you actively use the partition and populate the journal.

It doesn't make a great deal of sense to me that the journal would get unusually large so as to file the partition, but my guess is that the journaling routines are allocating a "minimum" required amount of disk space much like a "swap" space file in the Windows world. Thus, it may reserve 18MB based upon your highly dynamic file usage, yet it really only needs a 100K to meaningfully manage the journal for that partition.

I may be talking out my ass, but it seems to me that a 20MB journalled partition in impractical. You may want to seek out a more informed discussion from the ext3 developers.



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[unixfreak]

Minimum size for Reiserfs is something like 40MB. Ext3 must have a similar size limit.

For some reason the logs for Reiserfs and Ext3 require huge logs unlike other OSes. No idea why!

Cheers

 

[LimJim]

Hi,

In fact, I tried on a 100M filesystem. With overiting the same file of 4 X 20M in this file system, it gives "No Space left on device". It seems to me that the system actually check the filesystem size to see whether it has enough space but not checking whether the file writting to the filesystem is actually the same file after all. Thus, it did not release the space for the overwritten file. I'm not sure whether my guess is correct. However, with this problem, I could only create it as a ext3 filesystem but mount it with ext2 to temporary solve the problem. Could anyone tell me how to solve the problem? Is there a patch for this? The worst thing is it happens on Redhat version 7.3 and 9.0. It also affected rdist as we transfer a hugh number of file for synchronization and quite a number of them is overwritten files.

Thanks.