[Novalug] MORE on full root partition problem

[Peter Larsen]

On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 23:37 -0400, Roger W. Broseus wrote:
> Tom: Thanks for thinking on this. The problem is not in /var or /mail files.
> 
> It's in    /proc!

Proc isn't a normal filesystem. Those aren't really files you see there.
It's the kernel telling you what's going on.

> 
> /proc has a hugh number of folders named sequentially 1 thru 7, 16, 27,
> 28,5 in the 100s, 8 in the 1900s, . . . 94 folders with similar sequeces,

Each process running on your system is represented. They come and go all
the time, and things change every millisecond on /proc. 

> ending with 10 in the 8037 to 8564 range. Some, but not all of these have
> replications of my /home and other folders - in a folder named "root!"

Those aren't replications. Those are POINTERS!  If you try to remove
them, you may well end up deleting the REAL files. Best case - you
system crashes. You may, however, find that most "files" on /proc are
read only. Even to root.

> Also in /proc are
>   /acpi, /asound, . . . /syvipc, /tty and a few odd files. I assume these
> are "normal."

They aren't odd. They're vital. Most of all, they aren't files but tells
you about your system. You cannot delete them. Uninstall acpi
and /proc/acpi will disappear.

> A common trait of all of these folders is that they contain folders named
> attr, cwd, fd, fdinfo, task and include files with names like auxv,
> clear_refs, cmdline, . . . stat, statm, status, wchan.

Correct - all vital information about the individual process. They
cannot be deleted.

> All of the sequentially numbered folders were created today - some during
> the time of backup in very rapid succession: 94 of them in a time span of
> only 2 minutes at the time the Simple Backup was being attempted.

The moment you run your ls and new process is created. The moment your
ls is done, a process is deleted. So in the time your ls is running,
you've already have 2 major changes to the /proc structure. Those are
NOT real files. /proc is NOT to be included in any backup. Neigther
is /sys or /tmp.

> I'm about to delete them all - at least the numbered folders. (Well, in
> the morning: it's past bed time.)

NOOOOOOOOO!!!
First of, you can't. Second, they don't do what you think; third if you
could you would crash your system.

-- 
Peter Larsen <plarsen at famlarsen.homelinux.com>
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