Solving disk quota exceeded Error | Linux

Recently in one of our Linux DB servers we hit the maximum disk usage limit that is one full mount drive was full of data and logs with 100% usage when we do df -kh . We were not able to delete or modify any files there even login was taking long time. We were not able to even rm -rf few files even for removing small files like few MBs in size were giving “Disk Quota Exceeded” error. We solved above problem by finally applying a new way of removing files when system is in disk quota exceeded state. Please follow below steps which worked for us:

1. Search for the largest files and logs which are present and taking up huge space in system. Use below query to find out

find /montedDrive -type f -ls | sort -k 7 -r -n | head -20

Above command will give you top 20 largest sized files in system. you can give up to any number to get more largest files by giving head -30/40/50 etc.

2. Once you have got the files list which you are suppose to delete use below technique to delete them. as if you use rm -rf file name its going to throw disk quota exceeded error.

Let the file be abc_datafile_1_tmp.dbf

do below steps to remove big files :

echo > abc_datafile_1_tmp.dbf

the above command will make the file 1byte or 1kb from some GB’s size.

then use rm -f abc_datafile_1_tmp.dbf to remove it. It will work.

Note: It takes few minutes to show the freed disk space after removing the files. so wait for few minutes before executing df -kh to check the free space.

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