On 21 Jan 2003, Philippe wrote: > Hi everybody, > > My customer tried to make a tar file of its $HOME/dom. This tar has been > made using root, in order to take every file. Result : 1 tar file of 8Go > ! > So this is my question. COULD a / file-systems temporary full, or a > force reboot be the reason of loosing those files ? I really don't get > it... There is a reason why a normal user is not allowed to fill the disk completely (typically 5% are reserved for root), and there is a reason why one shouldn't work as root unecessarily. Your customer, simply filled the disk to the last byte. When this happens, the system freezes. A running system always shows some disk activity (easiest to understand is that there is a syslog, the user's xsession log). If it cannot, it is stuck. Then, your customer forced a reboot. But, also when the system boots, it needs some free space to write stuff (/tmp, maintain links, syslog, etc.). Thus, it is clear, it cannot boot. For the missing regular files, I don't know when they got lost, but you should realize that the system just froze immediately, i.e. without closing any open files. These files always could be lost, completely or partially. But some guru may fill in here what exactly happened. I cannot follow the notion to backup your own home as root. What files did he think he will not "take"? He would have had backed-up all files he has read permission for. Which files in $HOME don't have read, or are owned by somebody else (and aren't readable)? Another thing to think about. Does he really has 8GB in $HOME (or more, if he compressed)? Or does he has recursive links, and tarred with "-h"? Anyway, what was already discussed in the "I can destroy your system" thread, the general rule is not to do things as root, unless you really need to. And if you do it, and you are not sure what you are doing, monitor what is going on. Cheers, Michael -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
