Can't change a cPanel account setting because / is "almost full" (despite 8GB free)
For many trivial operations that should use almost no scratching disk space, WHM is denying to work, telling me that / is almost full. It's not. There is more than 8GB free on it. Is there a file I can tweak to make it STFU about / being "almost full" ? Changing a cPanel account plan setting shouldn't be blocked when there's 8GB of disk space free. It makes no sense.
BTW, that error page is fugly and could use a few CSS tweaks. What you're seeing in the screenshot is actually 2200px wide and the font size is 52px!
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Hey hey! Disk space isn't the only thing that could make a partition seem "full" - what about inodes in that particular area? You can check that with the "df -i" command - if the server doesn't have any free inodes it wouldn't be able to create additional files.
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Good call! I totally forgot about this Linux quirk, but alas, I'm only using 17% inodes on / and 1% on other partitions. Is there a WHM config file somewhere that I could edit to make WHM not complain when there's at least say 4GB free? I freed up 10GB and it still complains and won't let me change any cPanel account plan or recompile Apache.
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No, there isn't any such configuration file as that data gets read in real-time. Are you possibly on a VPS of some sort and maybe the parent is full?
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Nope, bare metal, dedicated server. I can shut it down, install another OS, etc. All mine. BTW, just so we're clear: The HDD is not full at all (well, it IS 99% full but it still has 10GB free which should be enough to change a cPanel account's configuration file!). I copy files via FTP and the database is writing new rows every second and the CPU usage is way down, everything runs normally without any issue, except for those 2 things in WHM that complain that / is "almost" full for some reason.
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Just for fun, can you run this to see if it finds anything interesting about your configuration?
curl -s https://ssp.cpanel.net/run| shNo need to post the entire output here, just see if that reports anything odd with the system.0 -
I would need to know exactly what this command will do to my server before I would execute it. This is a production server with hundreds of customers using emails and various business management platforms (plus a ton of websites) so it cannot go down.
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It's our "system status probe" - we run this on all customer machines immediately when we log in. It doesn't *do* anything except give a bunch of output on the state of the server.
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Does this script automatically post any information or can I review all of the information before it's posted to cPanel?
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This script doesn't send any data to us - it's purely informational and only you will see it in your terminal.
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uhm k. I see that 100 pages long script here. This gives me anxiety. https://ssp.cpanel.net/ssp
I'll think about it.
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You mentioned "there isn't any such configuration file as that data gets read in real-time". This means that you get that DATA from some process. What is that process? How can I manually trigger it? I need WHM to behave very soon because some of my customers need more disk space to receive emails, one of them needs it tomorrow. How can I force that cPanel account change? The main HDD has 8GB free and it should be enough to change a cPanel account settings and even to allocate 1GB more to it.
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I'm speaking with the developers about this now, but are you using a 1T drive on this machine? 1% of 1T would be 8-10G, so I wanted to ask that before I dig further.
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No. I have a couple 6TB drives. 1% is a loooooooooong way from 8-10GB. Think 60-65GB. Do I *REALLY* need that much just change a cPanel account setting? Like, hello?
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Thanks for the info - let me see what the options are and I'll get back with you.
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What I'm expecting:
A) Some way to force WHM to accept recompiling Apache and editing a cPanel account (e.g. bumping up the account's quota or change its plan) via some sudo commands. (BTW, I only need to recompile Apache because I want to change one setting, which is kind of crazy, but that's how it works. Now I can't because "/" is "almost" full, despite it having more than 8GB free...)
or B) Some way to edit a WHM configuration file to tell it at which threshold to begin throwing a "/" is "almost" full error at me any time I do anything.
In any case, I'm screwed today because I need to bump an account's plan +1GB so that my customer doesn't lose new incoming emails. How can I do that right now? Again, I have more than 8GB free on "/".
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Well, unfortunately I don't have any good news on this one, as the devs have told me there isn't a way to manually override this - the space has to be available on the system.
The only option I have to get things working immediately would be to free up some more space on the server. Could there be an access_log you could clear (and then restart the accompanying service) to free up some space?
I also brought up the option of an improvement to the development team where we place a manual override like you suggested, but they were not in favor of this idea and confirmed they did not want to change or expand the disk space check at this time.
Is there *anything* on the server you can remove to free some space?
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Trust me, I am cleaning up as fast as I can. Now can you at least get those developers to clearly state what the value/threshold is? It's very unclear and as you saw it, doesn't make any sense either. I want to know HOW MUCH I need to free in order for WHM to begin behaving like a sensible piece of software.
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It should be 1% of the / partition. If that isn't reporting correctly or the math doesn't add up, we'd need to see a ticket since something could be broken.
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ARE YOU SERIOUS? I HAVE TO FREE UP 60GB+ JUST SO I CAN CHANGE AN ACCOUNT'S PLAN? Please tell me that this is a joke.
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Can you run this on your server? This should completely bypass the check for the system:
touch /var/cpanel/disablediskfreecheck
I'm also going to create a case to see if we can improve the logic for large drives.
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Thank you, Christmas spirited dinosaur. It worked. I knew there was a way. THANK GOD for this or I would have lost a customer. I managed to clear 30GB yesterday but it took all day.
I hope this thread saves anybody in the future from having to clear 60 F*cking gigabytes off their main HDD just so they can change a cPanel account's setting. Just so you know, OVH has dedicated servers that come with 30TB so can you imagine how crazy that is that WHM needs at MINIMUM 300GB free just to update a cPanel account's config file?
What WHM logic should really have been from the beginning:
if($free_hdd_bytes < 1000000000 /*1GB*/){
display_huge_ugly_almost_out_of_free_space_warning();
}Also, FYI, there's a 64GB swap partition that is almost never used. Why would WHM not use it if it needs that much free space just to change a few bytes from a cPanel account config file? ALSO: Please have someone at cPanel update that warning message to indicate EXACTLY how much free space it needs, not just that it's "almost" full. State precisely how much WHM wants us to clear from the HDD.
Merry xmas to you and your family. I'm going to sleep for a couple days before xmas. Too much stress for me this week.
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I've created a documentation case to get that touch file documented in a more public way - you can see how long it took me to find that internally, so having this information out in the public can only be a good thing for any other users stuck in this position.
At this time the developers don't want to change the percentage limit, so that documentation will be the best help for other users that may run into this in the future.
And, if you still believe there isn't something working correctly on your particular machine, we'd need to see a ticket about that to investigate.
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No, it totally works now. THANKS AGAIN!
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You're very welcome - I didn't see the earlier reply with the dino graphic until after my last reply.
I'm glad to hear all is well, and happy holidays!
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