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...
--
https://tonybaldwin.info
art, music, software by me, tony
3F330C6E
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