[gentoo-user] Re: can't create file but disk isn't full

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 05/09/2010 01:46 AM, Crístian Viana wrote:
> it doesn't seem so :-(
>
> Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
> /dev/sda6            20856832  108698 20748134    1% /home
>
> I didn't know that the filesystem could run out of inodes before the
> disk space itself! thanks for the information :-)

Long shot, but check if root can write files.  If yes, it probably means 
your reserved block count is a bit high (default is 5% I believe).  The 
reserved block count is a mechanism that disallows further writes to the 
filesystem if it gets too full, and only root can keep writing.

If that's your problem, the reserved block count can be changed with the 
tune2fs tool.  To set it to, say 2%, you would run:

   tune2fs -m 2 /dev/sda6

I don't know if it's safe to do this while the filesystem is mounted. 
To play it safe, go to single user mode, umount /home, and only then run 
the above command.