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74

mv fails with "No space left on device" when the destination has 31 GB of space remaining

rated 0 times [ 74] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 8180 / 2 Years ago, tue, october 11, 2022, 12:51:46

I've been trying to move 32.6 GB of files to a folder on an external flashdrive to free up space on my laptop's SSD. After opening up the source folder in Terminal (and running ulimit -S -s unlimited to keep mv from throwing up), mv *from* /media/[username]/8849-14DB/Screenshots/ transferred the first 5.9 GB just fine.

But then, with 26.7 GB still to go:

mv: cannot create regular file '/media/[username]/8849-14DB/Screenshots/Screenshot from 2022-01-06 06-34-27.png': No space left on device

mv: cannot create regular file '/media/[username]/8849-14DB/Screenshots/Screenshot from 2022-01-06 06-34-30.png': No space left on device

mv: cannot create regular file '/media/[username]/8849-14DB/Screenshots/Screenshot from 2022-01-06 06-34-34.png': No space left on device

mv: cannot create regular file '/media/[username]/8849-14DB/Screenshots/Screenshot from 2022-01-06 06-34-39.png': No space left on device

mv: cannot create regular file '/media/[username]/8849-14DB/Screenshots/Screenshot from 2022-01-06 06-35-23.png': No space left on device



[repeated ad infinitum]

This despite the fact that the flashdrive in question is not, in fact, out of space, as shown by:

me being able to successfully save a test file to said flashdrive, and

both the drive's Properties window and its Disks entry showing that it still has 31.1 GB of free space remaining.

However, when I tried to use the GUI to move the aforementioned test file into the specific directory where I'd been trying to use mv to move the multiple gigabytes of files, I did get a "No space left on device" error, indicating that

whatever the issue is, it's specific to that folder, and

this isn't a command-line-specific issue.

I looked at this earlier question: Filesystem - No space left error, but there is space. However, the answers to that question were unhelpful to me, as they related to the limited number of inodes available on an ext-family filesystem, whereas, in my case, the destination filesystem is a FAT32-formatted flashdrive.

What issue am I running into that keeps the files from transferring, and how do I overcome it?

EDIT: The target directory has 16,383 files in it.

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cugure

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answered 2 Years ago amencisiv · Accepted Answer

Ext4 filesystems are not the only ones with limitations on the number of files. FAT32 filesystems have a limit on the number of files that can be stored in a single directory. If you are using short names (8 characters + . + 3 character file extension) then the limit is 65,534 files. However, if you use longer names, then every 13 bytes of the name is stored as a separate directory entry, which can greatly limit the number of files you can fit in a directory.

In your case, it looks like each file is actually taking up 4 directory entries, since you have 16,383 files, and 16,383 * 4 is 65,532, which brings you right up to the limit. At a closer look, each filename has 39 characters, which is 39 bytes: exactly 13 * 3. So you have 3 directory entries for each filename, and a fourth for the actual file contents.

You can get around this by either:

formatting the drive as NTFS, which limits the number of files to about 4 billion (should be enough)

putting the files in different sub-directories, since the limitation is on the number of directory entries, and you aren't running into the limit on the total number of files quite yet