Why root partition is full, "a lot of command can not be use

My System is SLES 10 SP4.
linux-02:/ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 64Z 64Z 0 100% /
udev 762M 120K 762M 1% /dev
/dev/sda3 198M 15M 173M 8% /boot
linux-02:/ # vim
-bash: vim: command not found
linux-02:/ # reboot
-bash: reboot: command not found

Running out of space should not cause a system to suddenly fail to find
commands. One way running out of space can lead to that, though, is if
you try to patch while nearly (or already) out of space and with something
still actively consuming space (or trying to) outside the patch process.
When files are removed (just before they are replaced with newer files)
the thing consuming space fills up the available space and now the patch
cannot complete. This falls in the “bad” category of life.

First thing, figure out what is using up the space. Clear out temporary
files, logs, cache, etc., and if anything is running that might use up
space (generating logs, temporary files, cache, or others), kill it. At
this point you’re down to the wire. Anything running that doesn’t need to
should be stopped gracefully or killed.

Next, install things that provide basic commands like vim (probably a
‘vim’ package, maybe ‘vim-base’) and reboot (sysvinit; that should scare
you… missing that means you’re about to be with a completely dead server
unless you fix it without rebooting or with a rescue disk after rebooting).

On 08/14/2013 08:14 PM, andyleigood wrote:[color=blue]

My System is SLES 10 SP4.
linux-02:/ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 64Z 64Z 0 100% /[/color]

What is the ‘Z’ unit after ‘64’? I do not believe you have a zettabyte,
and if you do that’s pretty funny that you filled it up (assuming ‘df’
would even support that letter as a designator).

Good luck.

Thank you!
You said very detailed, I understand.

[QUOTE=ab;15207]
On 08/14/2013 08:14 PM, andyleigood wrote:[COLOR=blue]

My System is SLES 10 SP4.
linux-02:/ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 64Z 64Z 0 100% /[/COLOR]

What is the ‘Z’ unit after ‘64’? I do not believe you have a zettabyte,
and if you do that’s pretty funny that you filled it up (assuming ‘df’
would even support that letter as a designator).

Good luck.[/QUOTE]

This is a point that IMO needs further attention - it might very well be a corruption of the file system. Which would explain many of the symptoms…

So doing a reboot to some repair system plus running a detailed file system check might be a good starting point, rather than further mangling things by more modifications (file deletes, installs) to the inconsistent file system.

Also I’d like to point out that such situations (be it a true “file system full” or “file system corruption”) are the main reason to partition the file systems, instead of using a single, large “/” fs. You’d limit the impact to a single file system, which is usually much easier to fix. Especially user-writable areas (/home, /tmp) and those used for runt-time data (/var, and again separately /var/log) should be put into separate file systems, since the root user then still would have a controlled system to clean up.

Regards,
Jens