<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Disk Full Failure</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK REV="MADE" HREF="mailto:pgsql-docs@postgresql.org"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="PostgreSQL 8.0.11 Documentation" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Monitoring Disk Usage" HREF="diskusage.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Monitoring Disk Usage" HREF="diskusage.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)" HREF="wal.html"><LINK REL="STYLESHEET" TYPE="text/css" HREF="stylesheet.css"><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><META NAME="creation" CONTENT="2007-02-02T03:57:22"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="5" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >PostgreSQL 8.0.11 Documentation</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="diskusage.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="diskusage.html" >Fast Backward</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 24. Monitoring Disk Usage</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="diskusage.html" >Fast Forward</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="wal.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="DISK-FULL" >24.2. Disk Full Failure</A ></H1 ><P > The most important disk monitoring task of a database administrator is to make sure the disk doesn't grow full. A filled data disk will not result in data corruption, but it may well prevent useful activity from occurring. If the disk holding the WAL files grows full, database server panic and consequent shutdown may occur. </P ><P > If you cannot free up additional space on the disk by deleting other things, you can move some of the database files to other file systems by making use of tablespaces. See <A HREF="manage-ag-tablespaces.html" >Section 18.6</A > for more information about that. </P ><DIV CLASS="TIP" ><BLOCKQUOTE CLASS="TIP" ><P ><B >Tip: </B > Some file systems perform badly when they are almost full, so do not wait until the disk is completely full to take action. </P ></BLOCKQUOTE ></DIV ><P > If your system supports per-user disk quotas, then the database will naturally be subject to whatever quota is placed on the user the server runs as. Exceeding the quota will have the same bad effects as running out of space entirely. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="diskusage.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="wal.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Monitoring Disk Usage</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="diskusage.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Write-Ahead Logging (<ACRONYM CLASS="ACRONYM" >WAL</ACRONYM >)</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >