[OpenAFS] On the wording "No space left on device"
Michael Loftis
mloftis@wgops.com
Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:47:00 -0700
--On January 29, 2008 1:25:29 PM -0500 Jeff Blaine <jblaine@kickflop.net>
wrote:
> We had a user complain this week about having no clue what
> "No space left on device" meant.
>
> Regardless of this particular user's inability to deduce
> that there was "NO SPACE LEFT", I like to take these
> opportunities to consider improvements.
>
> "Disk, partition, or volume has insufficient free space"
>
> Better yet, why does it have to be so vague? Can't it
> determine the actual problem, at least for the 90% case
> of quota limit?
>
> "Quota for volume u.jblaine has been exceeded."
In general, no. On most platforms (all Unix variants for example) the
error message itself comes from the systems libc/locale. AFS, and most
other kernel/system level calls, only pass back an error integer. It's the
responsibility of the OS to make that into something a human can read if it
needs to be. Since it can mean out of disk space, or out of inode space,
or even a "full directory" on some filesystems (i think AFS gives back that
error when it runs into that). I think there might be a specific error
that can be given out for quota exceeded on atleast some platforms, but the
problem then becomes is the fileserver telling the client that or not? If
not then the client will/would need to make a call to ascertain the quota
status any time it gets a no space error.