[SOLVED] Non-root-user cannot write in home. There is availible space but not free.

[topos]

Fedora 17, laptop.

System monitor and df command show:

~# df -h /home
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda4 251G 240G 0 100% /home
(system monitor also says: Free: 11.7 GiB)

If I try to write a file it says that there is no space available
(echo something > file --> write error: No space left on device).

However, root can write!


There IS space, but it is listed as unavailable.
Only root can use this space (but neither got avail over 0).


Additional info:
I have switched off SELINUX.
I have tried to create another user. Same problem.
Removing files do not help.

[jpollard]

Has nothing to with SELinux, or users.

It has to do with a full filesystem.

By default, the filesystem header usually specifies a reserve space to allow root to do things that normal users cannot do.

If you are using an ext* filesystem, you can use tunefs (see manpage for details) to adjust the amount of reserve space. Some people put the reserve space on a /home filesystem to zero. Of course, when something happens that needs root to do things to the filesystem, there will be no available space for any intermediate operations.

In case you are wondering what those things might be - a filesystem recovery (after a severe crash) may require allocating some blocks for directories to hold lost files... without a reserve space to allocate from, this cannot be done. 10% (I believe that amount of reserve is the default) can be a bit high though.

[topos]

Thanks, many many many thanks.