Can't empty the /tmp directory Read-only file system warning

roctaiwan · 03-02-2010, 04:39 AM

Does anyone know why files in my /tmp directory are not able to rm even using root login? not only that, I can't even chmod or do anything to files in /tmp directory... it always saying "read only file system" warning

evo2 · 03-02-2010, 04:40 AM

It appears that for some reason it was mounted read only. Can you please post the output of:

Code:

mount

Evo2.

geovg · 03-02-2010, 04:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roctaiwan

Does anyone know why files in my /tmp directory are not able to rm even using root login? not only that, I can't even chmod or do anything to files in /tmp directory... it always saying "read only file system" warning

Seems that your partition went read-only. You can confirm this by the following.

cd /tmp
touch testfile

If the file is not created, the partition is read-only. Please reboot the system/ run an fsck. That will fix it.

roctaiwan · 03-03-2010, 02:56 AM

Here is my mount output:

[huang@localhost ~]$ mount
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

did I mount it as read only??

Quote:

Originally Posted by evo2

It appears that for some reason it was mounted read only. Can you please post the output of:

Code:

mount

Evo2.

roctaiwan · 03-03-2010, 03:00 AM

yeah, I can't create anything on /tmp. I don't remember I did anything that make my /tmp to read only partition... how do you make /tmp partition read only normally?

Quote:

Originally Posted by geovg

Seems that your partition went read-only. You can confirm this by the following.

cd /tmp
touch testfile

If the file is not created, the partition is read-only. Please reboot the system/ run an fsck. That will fix it.

evo2 · 03-03-2010, 03:13 AM

According to mount you don't have a separate /tmp partion, so it is probably just a directory in /. mount also reports that / is mounted read-write (not read-only). Can you write to files in /?

For example, as root:

Code:

touch /foo

Evo2.

catkin · 03-03-2010, 03:13 AM

catkin · 03-03-2010, 03:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roctaiwan

yeah, I can't create anything on /tmp. I don't remember I did anything that make my /tmp to read only partition... how do you make /tmp partition read only normally?

From your mount output, /tmp is not a partition and all your usual partitions are writeable.

More information needed! Please post the output of

Code:

df -hT /tmp
/bin/ls -dl /tmp

roctaiwan · 03-04-2010, 06:24 AM

Evo, yes, I can write to /

I solve the problem by restarting my server and do fsck. But I still scratching my head and wondering what was happening.

I only have two partitions, one is for /boot on sda1 and all others are mount on sda2. Since they are all write-able then what was wrong?

Quote:

Originally Posted by evo2

According to mount you don't have a separate /tmp partion, so it is probably just a directory in /. mount also reports that / is mounted read-write (not read-only). Can you write to files in /?

For example, as root:

Code:

touch /foo

Evo2.