[OpenAFS] On the wording "No space left on device"

[Michael Loftis]

--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.