On Sat, 26 May 2018 13:42:51 -0500 David Wright said: > That's a new one on me: is it meant to happen? It seems like a > Catch-22 if you can't delete files when a partition is full. > All I've observed is that various things get stuck, depending on > the filesystem involved (usually /home in my case).
mke2fs or tune2fs "-m" (reserved blocks percentage) is for these situations. When the partition is full (minus reserved blocks) regular users cannot write anymore except root. It's default value while filesystem creation is 5%, which is too much for a partition larger than several gigs. I drop it to 1% (tune2fs -m 1) for all partitions after installation. As for OP, if disk-full condition was the case, then he could switch to root on terminal session and delete some files. Regards -- Abdullah Ramazanoğlu