[TriLUG] Failure Copying Large Amounts of Data

boyle at laue.chem.ncsu.edu boyle at laue.chem.ncsu.edu
Fri Apr 16 09:29:50 EDT 2010


Hi,

I have a problem copying > 90 GB of data between file systems.  Here is
the context:

I have one filesystem (ext3) which is 147GB in size and has about 94 GB
occupied.  Call this filesystem 'A'.  I recently bought a 500 GB USB
hard drive for to make backups.  I partitioned the USB drive into 2
equal ext3 partitions, let's call them 'B' and 'C'. I've tried copying
files between file system A and B in a variety of ways using cpio or
rsync.  However, both programs fail with a similar errors.  Below is a
representative error:

sending incremental file list
x08223.tar.gz
x08229.tar.gz
rsync: mkstemp "/media/backup2/shultz/.x08223.tar.gz.hWl4tB" failed: No space left on device (28)
rsync: mkstemp "/media/backup2/shultz/.x08229.tar.gz.SRyRYE" failed: No space left on device (28)

However, from the point of view a 'df -hs' command there is plenty of
room left on filesystem B (65 GB used, 166GB free).  I've tried doing
this as one big copy, e.g.:

find . -depth | cpio -pmvd /media/backup2/old_data

as well as running "smaller" individual copies in a loop (using
/bin/tcsh syntax):

foreach DIR ( `find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -print` )
    rsync -av $DIR/  /media/backup2/old_data/$DIR/
end

I've also tried the analogous foreach loop using cpio as well.

Further, possibly relevant info:  Due to how the data is generated on
filesystem A, a good many, if not the majority of the files are about
264K in size.

Can anyone give me an idea with what is going wrong?  I am beginning to
think that maybe the filesystems created on the USB drive are running
out of inodes or maybe some other esoteric low level filesystem
property.


Thanks for any help,

Paul

-- 
Paul D. Boyle			    |	boyle at laue.chem.ncsu.edu
Director, X-ray Structural Facility |	phone: (919) 515-7362
Department of Chemistry - Box 8204  |	FAX:   (919) 515-8909
North Carolina State University     |	http://www.xray.ncsu.edu  
Raleigh, NC, 27695-8204		    |
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