Re: [afnog] [Mailer-Daemon at mantse.gh.com: Mail deliveryfailed:returning message to sender]

[Brian Candler <B.Candler at pobox.com>]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 09:26:55AM -0000, Ayitey Bulley wrote:
> I have been trying to resolve this problem for a while, but I can't even
> pin-point where the problem is. Any assistance would be much appreciated.
> 
> Here is the output of "df -k" and "fstyp -v <device>". The system is a Sun
> E250 running Solaris 8. "/home (/dev/md/dsk/d0 )" is where mail is stored
> i.e. users mail is stored in "/home/<usename>/Maildir"

Ah, I think this is a familiar Solaris problem, and one which came up on
this list last year. Symptoms:

- you have spare space on the disk
- you have spare inodes on the disk (I presume - check with "df -i")
- but you can't create files; it says you are out of space

The problem is this: Solaris breaks the disk into fairly large blocks (8K I
think), which in turn it breaks into smaller units (1K?) when creating small
files.

However, when creating a large file - namely one over 8K - it needs a whole
8K "large" block. If there are no virgin 8K blocks available it will fail,
it cannot distribute the file as 1K chunks across partially-used blocks.

You can prove whether this is the problem using the following command:

# fstyp -v /dev/.... | head -20
and look for "nbfree" (whole 8K blocks), "nffree" (fragments), and "nifree"
(inodes)

My guess is that nbfree is zero, which means you will be unable to create
any files larger than 8K. That's a problem with Maildir under Solaris UFS:
you tend to keep creating and deleting lots of small files, so your 8K
blocks get fragmented and you have no whole ones left.

My suggestion is that you treat that remaining space as wasted, and just add
extra disks as if the filesystem were full. You might be able to reformat
the filesystem with a smaller bsize, but in any case that would end up
destroying all of the data on the disk.

(greps through mail on an archive machine... ah yes, I answered this
question to mensahk at ghana.com on 28/31 December 2002 :-)

Can someone remind me where the Afnog mailing list archives are? Even
better, could you put a link to them on www.afnog.org where the mailing list
is described, so I can find it again when I need it?

Thanks,

Brian.
__________________________________________________
This is the Africa Network Operators' Group(AfNOG) 
technical discussion list.
The AfNOG website is: <http://www.afnog.org>