7

It started happening today... all of a sudden, no apparent reason!

Here's the output from df:

assp:~# df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/simfs             6291456   1378384   4913072  22% /
tmpfs                  8202680         0   8202680   0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs                  8202680         0   8202680   0% /dev/shm

assp:~# df -i
Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/simfs           55781934   83005 55698929    1% /
tmpfs                2050670       2 2050668    1% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs                2050670       1 2050669    1% /dev/shm

assp:~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/simfs            6.0G  1.4G  4.7G  22% /
tmpfs                 7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs                 7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /dev/shm

Here's an actual entry from /var/log/mail.warn:

Dec 11 17:55:37 assp postfix/smtpd[30614]: warning: not enough free space in mail queue: 0 bytes < 1.5*message size limit
Dec 11 17:55:37 assp postfix/cleanup[30617]: warning: 4361D850D54: write queue file: No space left on device

.

4
  • Please paste the output of df here? Dec 12, 2009 at 13:35
  • How about the actual log lines, plus anything around them that could be related?
    – Bill Weiss
    Dec 13, 2009 at 15:35
  • Are there any large files which are held open by running or Zombie processes? lsof might be of some help here Dec 15, 2009 at 13:53
  • How about the output of postconf -n ? Also, maybe, du -sh / ?
    – Bill Weiss
    Dec 15, 2009 at 17:34

7 Answers 7

6

You might want to run a df-i to see if you have used up all your inodes.

You can have available storage space, and not have the ability to add files.

cache:~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             132G   68G   58G  55% /
cache:~# df -i
Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda1            17514496 13543293 3971203   78% /

You also might want to check to see if you have any quotas set (repquota -va).

1
  • 1
    df -i shows only 1% of max inodes used. repquota -va shows no quotas in effect.
    – Alex R
    Dec 12, 2009 at 3:16
3

5% (iirc) of space is reserved for root, might be your filesystem is "full" for normal users. You can get more info with e.g.

tune2fs -l /dev/sda1

2
  • 1
    server has only 6.2GB total... 78% free.
    – Alex R
    Dec 12, 2009 at 3:15
  • This helped me out! Thanks. The entry to look at is Reserved block count and multiply it by Block size to get bytes reserved.
    – Mei
    May 24, 2011 at 14:53
1

Which device is full? Perhaps there's plenty of space on one partition, but another (e.g. /tmp) is full? Do a df -h and see if any of the partitions are close to full, and then figure out if postfix uses that partition.

1
  • None of the partitions actually are full... That's what so strange about the errors.
    – Alex R
    Dec 13, 2009 at 14:55
0

Just curious, but is your queue > 2GB in size? I'm wondering if it's running into a filesystem size limit or a hard limit for postfix. I know that Apache dies when it hits 2GB on the log file (or at least it did at one point)

2
  • What do you mean by that? "is your queue > 2GB in size"
    – Alex R
    Dec 15, 2009 at 13:38
  • I meant your mail queue. In case something went haywire and created a single file larger than 2GB, in which case maybe something died while trying to parse it. 2GB has been a historic limit for several programs, even when the filesystem itself supports larger files just fine. Dec 15, 2009 at 15:36
0

What is the value of message_size_limit which is set?

http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#queue_minfree is a possible cause for this response.

1
  • I don't have message_size_limit, queue_minfree, or mailbox_size_limit. None of them are set in main.cf
    – Alex R
    Dec 15, 2009 at 13:42
0

From http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07849.html

Postfix tries to avoid the situation where the system is 100% full and it can no longer get work done.

To completely avoid such conditions, Postfix would have to reserve an amount of space the size of (message size limit * inbound concurrency). Unfortunately, this is not practical in many cases, so it settles for 1.5 times the message size limit.

This means that although you've got 5GB free - your settings are such that you need more.

0

I have same problem on OpenVZ virtual machine. Space is temporarily taken by backup.

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