Temp directory out of disk space

[Guest MistyWindow]

This happened on a Mandriva Free 2009 desktop installation a few days ago. Now the exact same fault has happened on a Mandriva Powerpack 2009 installation on my laptop.

 

After logging in I get this message:

 

The following installation problem was detected when trying to start KDE:

Temp directory (/tmp) is out of disk space.

KDE is unable to start

.

 

Then:

Could not start ksmserver. Check your installation

.

 

Both installations were on a dedicated HDD with PLENTY of disk space.

 

I'm a newbie. I've been using Ubuntu for a couple of months but much prefer Mandriva, particularly after paying for it. :huh:

 

If I reinstall and set up a separate /tmp partition is that likely to help?

 

Help would be much appreciated.

[David Batson]

It could be draksnapshot. It could be log files in /var/log.

 

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=100491

[Guest MistyWindow]

It could be draksnapshot. It could be log files in /var/log.

A bit of searching seems to point to that as a distinct possibility and the bug's been around for a while. If it's happened to me on 2 installations from 2 different install disks it must be a common problem.

1. I presume that when I reinstall I can uncheck draksnapshot during the installation?
   
2. Is there a limit on the size of the /tmp file?
   
3. If so can that limit be changed?
   
4. Would it be prudent to create a /tmp partition during installation? Would that help and if so what size should it be?
   

[SilverSurfer60]

It may be worth your while finding out if it is the size of your log files in /var/log. Draksnapshot requires configuring I do believe, so shouldn't run unless you set it that way.

If you have very large 'syslog' or 'messages' log files you could do with rectifying the cause.

[ianw1974]

Installing logrotate will fix the log files issue if they are large it means they are continually being added to and not rotated each day/week by creating new files.

[SilverSurfer60]

I thought logrotate was installed as standard? It usually is for me, and I have never had the problem of the drive filling up. :mellow:

[ffi]

It happened to me to this weekend in ubuntu after upgrading kde4 to kde4.2beta1, eventhough I still had diskspace left, turned out the upgrade hadn't completed for some reason

[ianw1974]

Yeah, I've normally had it installed by default on most distros, but not all though.

[medo3891]

logrotate is installed by default in Mandriva, this has been the case in 2008.0, 2008.1 and 2009.0 (don't know about older releases since 2008.0 was the first Mandriva I ever used). I think the more important utility is anacron. The cron jobs are run by default at 4:01am every day and there's a cron job that rotates the logs and compresses old logs to save disk space. If your machine was not running at this time then the cron job won't run and here comes anacron. anacron checks your system and runs any cron jobs that weren't run because the system was not up.

 

I don't think draksnapshot is the culprit here except if you don't have a separate /home partition.

 

Boot the machine, press Alt+Ctrl+F1, log in as root, then use this command:

du -akx / | sort -nr | head -n 50

 

It should list the biggest 50 files/folders in the root partition and that should give you a clue what ate up the disk space on the root partition. Also the output of df would be useful.

[pindakoe]

medo3819 may have the real cause -- I have found in several of last Mandriva's that anacron did not run or was simply absent. A lot of maintenance (log rotation, but also locate's database, the security checks will never get run as a consequence). I believe the other culprit was something in the script /usr/sbin/on_ac_power which for reasons I cannot recall always failed (or passed) and thus meant /etc/init.d/anacron always exited before anacron was started. Believe this was fixed before 2008.1 (may be a lot longer ago).

[medo3891]

Starting from 2009.0 anacron is installed and run by default.