[comp.unix.wizards] SunOS file corruption

hastings@coherent.com (Reed Hastings) (02/13/90)

I have heard that there was an old BSD bug such that if you let your
disk get more than 90% full you were likely to "lose files" or
"create garbage inodes" or similar ugly things.  

Can anyone confirm & clarify this, and most importantly, comment 
on whether it still exists in SunOS 4.x.

Many thanks, 
  -Reed.

Reed Hastings
  DOMAIN: hastings@coherent.com
  UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!hastings     
  INTERNET:   coherent!hastings@ames.arpa,    ...@sun.com,    ...@uunet.uu.net 
  USMAIL: Coherent Thought Inc.  3350 West Bayshore #205  Palo Alto CA 94303
  VOICE: (415) 493-8805

richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) (02/14/90)

>I have heard that there was an old BSD bug such that if you let your
>disk get more than 90% full you were likely to "lose files" or
>"create garbage inodes" or similar ugly things.  

It's nonsense.  I don't think I've ever seen a disk less than 90% full :-(
The rumour probably relates to the fact the the Berkeley filesystem reserves
10% of its space to improve performance.  (Root is not subject to this
restriction, hance it can go on creating files until "df" says the
partition is 111% full.)

-- Richard
-- 
Richard Tobin,                       JANET: R.Tobin@uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,           ARPA:  R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.                UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin