[Bug 35217] Re: Unable to login when disk space is exhausted

[Ian]

I agree that this should be assigned a higher priority,

Why, yes, it did catch me last night :)

It's made worse by the behaviour of ext3 when full: you can delete files
using 'rm' or 'apt-get clear' *BUT* the free space doesn't increase?!?
(Because the journalling system couldn't write anything before making
the changes that would give it some space?)

A combination of reboot, oh no, delete some files, reboot, oh no, try
deleting via Windows and ext2fs, reboot, oh no, run fschk, delete some
files, reboot, oh no, run fschk etc worked. In the end.

But, basically, the behaviour when the file system fills up is Not Good.

I leave it to others to decide what the best solution is - stop the file
system getting in this state? Having a specific utility to get free
space (e.g. by emptying caches) in such a way that ext3 actually creates
some or just increasing the helpfullness of the onscreen messages.

About the only good bit is that, browsing the bug database, it looks
like KDE is even worse :/

-- 
Unable to login when disk space is exhausted
https://launchpad.net/bugs/35217