When the user fills up the hard drive

[Sean Hammond]

What do you mean 'single user mode'? Does the initial ubuntu user
count as a 'superuser'? The fact is, this user cannot login when the
disk if full on Ubuntu. GNOME fails to load and they get dumped back
to GDM. This will happen to non-expert users. The only way to login is
to switch to a text-only virtual terminal. I think we need to do
something to ensure that GNOME login is always possible.

bjorn: sorry for double reply.

On 12/4/06, Bjoern Ottervik <bjorn.ottervik at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ext2/3 filesystems already reserves a cetain percentage of space for
> superusers by deafult, to make sure you can always log in - in single
> user mode - and free up space if something like this happens.
> Ext2/3 is still the default filesystem for Ubuntu, and I think it's a
> safe bet that anyone who is linux savvy enough to think they should be
> going around changing the default filesystem would also know how to
> mount partitions from a live environment and free upp space if something
> like this happens...
>
> Though I guess it wouldnt hurt to have a good and to the point warning
> when users are starting to fill upp their quota, explaining that it will
> cause them some difficulty. :) (provided that one is not already in place.)
>
> /Björn Ottervik
>
> Sean Hammond wrote:
> > I'm told that if a user fills up the entire hard drive on Windows XP
> > and then restarts the machine Windows will more or less keep running,
> > because a certain amount of space is always reserved for the page
> > file. So the user will still be allowed to login, although the system
> > will probably complain lots and go very slow. But they'll get warnings
> > about the disc being full and have a chance to take action.
> >
> > I recently got a panicked phone call from an Ubuntu user who had
> > filled the disk (disc?) up. It's partly his fault -- he ignored
> > Ubuntu's warnings that he was running out of space and kept
> > downloading, then restarted the computer. When you do this on Ubuntu,
> > you find that you can't login to GNOME. It doesn't give you any reason
> > either, just drops you back at GDM. So the user suspected that the
> > problem was due to lack of disc space, but at this point could do
> > nothing to free up space, and couldn't even get to the Internet to
> > search for help. All he could do was phone me up and say 'Help! My
> > essay is due today and I can't login!'. Ubuntu, like other linux
> > distros, goes down pretty hard when you fill up the disk. I've also
> > noticed that when the disk is full, but not so full that you can't
> > login, random things will happen, such as the network card
> > disappearing from the system, until you free up space and restart.
> >
> > Maybe this is worth a bug report?
> >
> > When I install Ubuntu for myself, I create seperate partitions for /
> > and /home. I don't do this when I install it for others, cause I don't
> > want to give them a non-default setup. By doing this I can reinstall
> > Ubuntu or install another Linux without having to backup and restore
> > /home. I think it might also prevent GNOME from failing to login, as
> > even if I fill up /home, / will still have some space. Am I right?
> > Does this mean that Ubuntu should use this partitioning scheme by
> > default?
> >
> > Either way, something needs to be done to prevent the system from
> > going down so hard if the disk gets filled. In the case of the user
> > who phoned me, I had to switch to a virtual terminal, login, explore
> > his home directory and find some suitably large yet unimportant files
> > to remove, mount his external hard drive manually, then move the files
> > onto it, unmount the drive safely, logout and switch back to GDM. I
> > showed him what I was doing, but it's a pretty involved process that
> > requires having a lot of Linux commands committed to memory. There's
> > no way he remembered enough to do it himself in the future.
> >
> >
>
>