file system is full : But df -k shows space available

Dear Experts,

We are using Digital Unix 4.0d on Alpha DS-20 E.
/var/adm/messages showed the following error

Jul 24 19:58:37 cbehotbill2 vmunix: /BSCSprod: write failed, file system is full
Jul 24 19:58:38 cbehotbill2 last message repeated 2 times

But df -k showed
BSCS_dmn#BSCSprod 10297944 972004 8644656 11% /BSCSprod

Why has this error occured and wht is the remedy for this .

Regds
Gerald Wilson

One possibility is that you are out of inodes. Look at your man pages for "df" there may be a "df -i" or a "df -e" or something that can show you the number of inodes remaining.

On HP-UX and Solaris this reasoning would apply to the older filesystems, but not to veritas filesystems. Veritas filesystems will dynamically allocate more inodes as needed. I don't know your system and I can't tell you if your system will dymanically allocate inodes or not.

But being out of inodes will cause the message that you are getting. The solution would be to rebuild the filesystem with more inodes.

Dear Sir,
df -ik showed %Iused 8%
Compaq says that Max inodes can be 2 power 31.
They it is a problem with max extents.
Is it so?

regds
Wilson

Just a thought.... some actions such as vi open the file in a different location as a temporary location while it is being worked with. I had this same thing and it turned out that the temp location which was on a different partition was full....so it wasn't that where I was was full...just where the file was temporarilly saved while I worked with it was...

Might not be anything to do with - but worth checking. Really depends what you were doing when you got the error.

Dear Sir,
There were around 8,50,000 files in the file system.
Hence this error
According to Compaq Support,
On Filesystems that consist primarily of small files and where applications regularly create and delete very large numbers of these small files, ADVFS can run out of metadata space.
In Tru64 v5.* with AdvFs type '4' domains, the way BMT works has been redesigned to eliminate the possibility of exhaustion, however ADVFS type'3' domains still exists in Tru64 v5.*

Thanks for the suggestions

Regds
Wilson