Getting More Space on a Disk Drive

If you run out of space on a disk drive, there are several ways you can try to remedy the problem. You can automatically track and remove unwanted files, restrict users from certain directories, or mount space from another disk drive.

Prerequisites

You must have root user, system group, or administrative group authority to execute these tasks.

Clean Up File Systems Automatically

Use the skulker command to clean up file systems by removing unwanted files:

skulker -p

The skulker command is used to periodically purge obsolete or unneeded files from file systems. Candidate files include files in the /tmp directory, files older than a specified age, a.out files, core files, or ed.hup files.

Normally, the skulker command is run daily, often as part of an accounting procedure run by the cron command during off-peak hours. You must have root user authority to run this command. For more information about using the skulker command in a cron process, refer to "Fixing Disk Overflows" .

For information on typical cron entries, refer to "Setting Up an Accounting System" .

Restrict Users from Certain Directories

Another way to free up disk space and possibly to keep it free is to restrict and monitor disk usage.

• Restrict users from certain directories. For example:

  chmod 655 rootdir

  This sets read and write permissions for the owner (root) and sets read-only permissions for the group and others.
• Monitor the disk usage of individual users. For example, if you added the following line to the cron file /var/spool/cron/crontabs/adm, the dodisk command would run at 2 a.m. (0 2) each Thursday (4):

  0 2 * * 4 /usr/sbin/acct/dodisk

  The dodisk command initiates disk-usage accounting. This command is usually run as part of an accounting procedure run by the cron command during off-peak hours. Refer to "Setting Up an Accounting System" for more information on typical cron entries.

Mount Space from Another Disk Drive

Another way to get more space on a disk drive is to mount space from another drive. There are three ways to mount space from one disk drive to another:

• Use the Web-based System Manager fast path wsm fs.
• Use the smit mountfs fast path.
• Use the mount command. For example:

  mount -n nodeA -vnfs /usr/spool /usr/myspool

  The mount command makes a file system available for use at a specific location.

For more information about mounting file systems, see "Mounting or Unmounting a File System" .