Can't login, says tmp directory full but tmp file is empty! Could be linked to MySQL?
 

Hi,

I hope someone can help - been struggling with this for days. I'm kind of a newbie!

My workstation shut down when I was away from my desk (power failure I think) and when I came back it wouldn't let me logon, except for onto a different session (Gnome) which has its limitations for my work.

It says that the tmp directory is full, so I went in and cleared this, plus generally cut down a load of files so no directories are full (or even close). I noticed that when you look at the properties for tmp it says that there are no files, but also no free space!

Don't know if it's relevant but I wonder if it has anything to do with MySQL... when starting up my computer it stops for ages on the MySQL bit and eventually displays an error before continuing on.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

What is the output of the following commands ?

Hi,

Thanks for replying to my post! Ok so here is the output:

[root@lbep ~]# df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
143G 138G 0 100% /
/dev/sda1 99M 15M 80M 16% /boot
tmpfs 505M 0 505M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2 99M 5.7M 89M 6% /home

[root@lbep ~]# cd / ; du -sch *

7.7M bin
8.9M boot
812K Cold_Again_3200x1200_Skybase.jpg

I presume the first of these checks to see whether various drives are full? What about the second?

Thanks

Sorry missed some of the reply to the second command:

[root@lbep ~]# cd / ; du -sch *
7.7M bin
8.9M boot
812K Cold_Again_3200x1200_Skybase.jpg
49G data
128K dev
121M etc
696K export
150K home
125M lib
16K lost+found
1.4M media
8.0K misc
8.0K mnt
0 net
440M opt
du: `proc/32274': No such file or directory
0 proc

You didn't let this command run long enough. The point was to see whether the /tmp directory was in an abnormal state. So, to save time, do this:

Also, check the permissions on / and /tmp. Sometimes these permissions get changed (by someone who spends too much time as root) and the error you report can be one result.

BTW, / should have root.root ownership and drwxr-xr-x permissions,
while /tmp should have root.root ownership and drwxrwxrwt permissions.

Both permissions are required to have these values for normal access to /tmp, and /tmp access is essential for normal application functioning.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've checked the file permissions and they're ok - as you suggested.

Running the command on tmp returns the following:

[root@lbep ~]# du -sch /tmp
144K /tmp
144K total

Does 'total' refer to available space? Therefore suggesting that tmp is full? Because I've been in and deleted all files and it still returns the same value for both '/tmp' and 'total'.

Thanks again for your time.

One thing to remember is that if a file is held open by a process, deleting the file does NOT remove it, just marks it ready to go. Unix only actually removes a file after all procs have let go of the file.
This is is often used to create 'secure' temp files.
A reboot will clear those files if that is the case.

Try a reboot, then

df -h

Thanks guys for all your suggestions, but nothing seems to be working.

I'll keep looking into it and hopefully figure something out.

Cheers