UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hi All,
There was a background process running on a Solaris 2.8 machine, and appeared to have filled all available disk-space. I done a killall, and upon re-booting found that the file system had filled up, and will not boot as normal as a result. For example, I'm getting

Code:

/usr/adm/messages: No space left on device
ufs: NOTICE: alloc /: file system full

and so forth, and as a result, will not conduct the normal boot-up (a 'login incorrect:' dialog-box appears). As I can't reduce the space through a normal remote log-in, is there any other way of reaching the file system to delete some of the files or using an alternative booting method?

Ta

Try to boot to single user mode. From the ok prompt "boot -s" should do it.

Your disk configuration is asking for trouble like this. Almost always on a Sun, /usr/adm is a symlink to /var/adm and /var is a seperate filesystem. I really prefer for /usr to seperate too. Ordinary users can write to /tmp and to /usr/tmp...do you have these in / as well?

I taught about going into single-user mode, but cannot seem to get into the Ok> prompt - after it checks and mounts filesystems, it seems to hang!!

A full / filesystem give always trouble.
I think the fact of a full root , is the reason you cannot boot single user

Iam afraid you need to boot from CD-rom.

be happy, up to now there is no reason for re-install your box, but its is the only way to get access to your disks.

Do you have a CD on your desk with the right OS level.
be carefull, boot from CD by typing `boot cdrom` on the OK prompt.

I never did this using Solaris 2.8, you had to stop the installation proces and you need a shell.

When you on the shell run fsck on all 'known' filesystems.
After you ran fsck you can mount your root filesystem and clean it.
check /tmp, /usr/tmp, /var/adm, /var/mail, etc

Good luck, post your progress maybe we can help in the meantime

I believe that you can get to single user mode with a full root filesystem. If not, then yes, you will need to boot the cd.

But first you need an ok prompt. The procedure to get one varies according to your hardware. With a serial console it is just the break character. I have heard that Solaris 8 has changed this to:
C/R control-b ~
And you need .5 seconds between each char but not more than 5 seconds in total it says here. I'm not sure how much of this I believe...

With a graphic head the sequence is STOP-A.

There may be key which need to be in a certain position.

And it may be some other sequence for your setup. But these are the ones I know.

Thanks fellas - I managed to get in on the boot -s ,
and cleaned out the /usr/tmp, etc, which reduced the capicity of the root, e,g
originally df -k
Capicaty Mounted On
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 100% /

to
Capicaty Mounted On
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 46% /

Following this, I ran fsck. However, the login Failure dialog/problem screen persists upon normal booting, so I think I may have to reinstall??

Re-installation may be the wise move, but I would go back to single user mode and figure this out if I can. Can you login as root? Is your passwd and shadow file intact? Do you have a /etc/nologin file?