No space left on device

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No space left on device

Hello, strange thing that is happening on my G5 recently.
Whenever I try to save a file, I've a "No space left on device" message. There is only an internal hard-drive, no external storage. Furthermore, I can't access internet anymore from the Mac (maybe because it cannot write the DNS cache?).

df -H gives
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted On
/dev/disk0s3 160G 66G 94G 41% /

df -i
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/disk0s3 312319584 128458520 183349064 41% 16121313 22918633 41%

/

So, there is plenty of room, plenty of inodes and I precise that there is no quota for the user. Any hint about solving this problem?

PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.3.x)

Posted on Mar 10, 2008 6:46 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Dale Weisshaar

Level 6

15,870 points

Mar 10, 2008 10:50 AM in response to nKame

Have you done any of the basics?

Try using Disk Utility to do a Disk Repair, as shown in this link, while booted up on your install disk first.
You could have some directory corruption. Let us know what errors Disk Utility reports and if DU was able to repair them.

 DALE

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Answer 2

nKame Author

Level 1

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Mar 10, 2008 2:15 PM in response to Dale Weisshaar

Standard disk utility didn't show anything, I didn't think about the installation disk.

Here we go:
- overlapped extent allocation
- Keys out of order

And the best is for the end:
The volume Xxxx could not be repaired.
Repair completed.

Usually, when a job is not done, I don't call it completed :-D

Running fsdk_hfs (y, f, r, any combination), same outcome:
- The volume Xxxx could not be repaired

Backup / erase / recover, or another solution?

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Answer 3

ali brown

Level 7

26,493 points

Mar 10, 2008 2:54 PM in response to nKame

Hi nKame!

"overlapped extent allocation
Keys out of order"
That is an indication of serious directory corruption.
More info here Handling "overlapped extent allocation" errors.

As Disk Utility cannot repair the drive, you will need a Third-Party utility, like DiskWarrior, or TechTool Pro.

If you are able to create a backup, the other alternative, is to do an Erase & Install.

If you have access to another Firewire enabled Mac, you could use Firewire Target Disk Mode, to try to retrieve your data, or do a complete system backup.
Use a utility like SuperDuper, or Carbon Copy Cloner.

ali b

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Answer 4

Mar 10, 2008 3:03 PM in response to nKame

Guess Ali beat me to it! Yes, you have serious damage there!

If Disk Utility can't fix it, you'll need a more robust utility for the repair. I would recommend DiskWarrior. It is the best at directory repairs. It rebuilds then actually replaces your old directory. I feel every Mac owner should have a copy. Make sure you get the disk so you can boot up on it to run repairs. You can also install it on another drive and run it from there to repair this one. DW works faster that way.
I use DW once a month to try and catch errors in my system from getting too far out of hand.
If you have a good backup, hopefully a clone of your system before you had issues, an Erase and Install will also rid you of this issue. But, beware! You will lose everything on the drive with this procedure. Let us know if you need help with that!

DALE

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Answer 5

nKame Author

Level 1

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Apr 23, 2008 1:59 PM in response to nKame

Quick update about my problem.
I eventually bought a new harddrive, and did a fresh install of MacOS on it. Unfortunately, I had only 10.2 (my 10.3 is from a family license, and I did not have the DVD at hand), and in that case, Apple basically says "forget about all the songs you bought on iTunes, you're doomed". In order to solve that, I bought the latest MacOS, and the budget for buying DiskWarrior or another tool had evaporated. So I basically copied what could be read from the old drive (almost everything), and formatted it. And the next expenses still won't be for DiskWarrior, but for the applications I had running in MacOS 9.

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Answer 6

eww

Level 9

53,028 points

Apr 23, 2008 7:23 PM in response to nKame

Hi, nKame. Too bad you went to all the trouble and expense you did — DiskWarrior would have sorted everything out for you, probably in a few minutes, and without any need to replace your drive or any of your software.

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Answer 7

nKame Author

Level 1

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Apr 24, 2008 1:10 AM in response to eww

Maybe, maybe not. Since it's almost as expensive as MacOS, I do prefer investing in MacOS. Furthermore, one point I did not mention, is that when I had the two harddrives, the second one (old one) sometimes disappeared from the Finder. I can't say whether this is due to a hardware malfunction in the harddrive, or because of the overall problem of the SBBOD my machine has if I leave some default power saving options on.

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Answer 8

Apr 24, 2008 7:57 AM in response to nKame

I don't know what that acronym means, but if your Hard Drive is disappearing, that is serious. When you re-initialize it, I recommend you choose the option to "Zero all data". the process takes many hours, but it forces the drive to substitute spare blocks for any determined to be bad after zeroing.

If it fails on the first pass, conventional wisdom says you ought to run it one more time, to cover the case where a newly-activated spare block turns out to be bad and causes the failure. Beyond that most experts would say it is going bad quickly, and it is not reliable enough to hold data you care about.

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Answer 9

nKame Author

Level 1

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Apr 24, 2008 9:08 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

SBBOD = Spinning Beach Ball Of Death ( http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html )

I'll try the zeroing next time it does that, thanks for the tip.

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