On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 07:29:37PM -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:
Yesterday I could not log into a site on a little server here in my office.
I ssh-ed to the box, and found that the "disk is full" (thus could not write to disk).
df -h showed nothing of the sort, but df -i showed that / was 100% full of inodes.
I'v e since found that apache2 is writing files with names of a nature like
sess_908H908NF90821089HGARBleddygo0KH3r3
in /tmp at a rate of about 20 or 30 files/minute.
They can't be session files for users on my sites on the box, as there is only 1 user, me
(I have one redmatrix hub, one dokuwiki, one scuttle, one piwigo, and mail with postfix/dovecot running on the box,
I am the only user on the wiki, redmatrix, piwigo, and scuttle installations, this is basically all for personal use).
Most of these sess files are empty files (thus, occupying inodes without occupying "physical" disk space).
The few (maybe 5%) that are not empty appear to have something to do with a dokuwiki on the server
(the content mentions file paths to dokuwiki pages, like this:
DW68700bfd16c2027de7de74a5a8202a6f|a:1:{s:2:"bc";a:2:{s:5:"start";s:5:"start";s:9:"hax:tdict";s:5:"tdict";}} ).
Now this little "server" (formerly a desktop) has been running in this office with a dokuwiki on it for 4 years,
(running squeeze, initially, then lenny, and now wheezy) and I never had this problem until yesterday.
I have not updated the dokuwiki in months, but I've run regular aptitude updates, in fact,
I believe I did so within 48 hours prior to this becoming an issue.
I installed the dokuwiki with Andreas' install script, not from the debian pkg.
Scuttle was installed from the debian pkg.
Piwigo was installed from upstream sources.
Redmatrix was installed from the upstream sources (github, I don't think it's even in Debian, yet, but should be).
How do I figure what is causing apache to write these files, why, and how to knock it off?
I found that /etc/apache2/php5.ini had session.save_path set to "/tmp".
I rent a server from contabo, where this line is commented out, so I
commented it out here on the little home server.
No more sess files are being written to /tmp.
I'm trying to figure out why this variable was different on the two
servers, and why I would ever have changed it on either one (I do not
recall doing so).
I can't help but wonder if a recent update in something...but updates
shouldn't edit my config files without asking me about that first,
right?
The whole root and cause of this is still a mystery to me, but, at the
moment, at least I see no more superfluous files being written to the
/tmp directory and occupying inodes.
Everything still seems to be functioning normally on the sites and mail.
Seemingly, the problem is resolved. I suppose if not, something will
become apparent soon enough to indicate as much.
Thanks,
Tony
--
https://tonybaldwin.info
all tony, all day long...