My HD gets full by itself after startup!!!
 

Background:

G3PowerPC 233 mHz beige desktop with a 20 GB HD, partitioned in 3 (8GB with MACOS 10.2, 2 GB with 9.2.2, and 10 GB for storage, music and video), a PCI card for USB and a PCI card for firewire, and total 256 MB of RAM.

Lately I installed the PCI firewire card, iMovie, and connected a video analg to digital bridge to the firewire port to convert my videos to digital.


Problem:

I don't know if this last installations created the problem, but since a few days, when starting up in MACOS 10.2, after a while the HD start up partition space starts to decrease until a message appears that there is no more space and the computer freezes. I can follow this up by opening the partition HD and looking at the free space stated there. This happens also when no program is open (only the finder).

When starting up from the MACOS 9.2.2 partition this does not happen, and the HD space in the MACOS 10.2 partition remains at 1.39 GB free space)


Some hints or suggestions?

Claudio

I believe the problem is happening because OS X is designed to not report the total amount of actual free space as a safety measure. The OS needs room for swap and temp files. I believe the OS is set to preserve around 8 to 10% of the HD space for the OS. That is probably why you see it decrease in size, and that is why it is only happening in OS X. I would do some cleaning and give your boot volume a bit more space.

Thanks for your quick response.... there is more than 1 GB of free space on this partition... do you think I should free up some more?

You would think 1gig would be sufficient, but maybe freeing up some more space could definately not hurt. You might also try running fsck. Boot into single user mode (hold down cmd+S at start up) and type this once its done booting:

sure, it won't hurt to free up more space. but it won't help either.

1GB free (on your boot partition, i'm assuming) is more than sufficient to startup the OS and the Finder.

your problem lies elsewhere than free space.

HUH?

It's possible that something you have running is generating a large number of swapfiles. Have a look at how many you have when you reboot by typing the following in Terminal:

ls /private/var/vm

Immediately after a reboot there should be one swapfile called:

swapfile0

Subsequent files are swapfile1, swapfile2, and so on. Each file is 76.2MB so, to fill 1GB you would need to generate around 13, which is a lot but certainly not impossible. The way to monitor this is to check every once in a while and see how many there are, preferably before your machine freezes again.

my apologies. i misread the original post. i thought he was experiencing problems immediately after startup.

obviously, it does sound like a swapfile/free space issue.

yeah OS X will grasp and hold onto some HD space and not report it as free space. Maybe try optimizing your HD, getting rid of temp files, delet stuff no longer wanted or used. View your system log after the freezes and see exactly what is causing the freeze.

tlarkin,

what exactly are you talking about here?

This thread here: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...0&pagenumber=1

Claudiob, it would be in your best interest to buy more RAM for that computer. Supposedly you can max out at 768mb. If this does indeed turn out to be a swap problem (which it seems likely to me as well), then adding more RAM will slow that process way down.
More RAM = less swap (at least so early for you). A stick of 256mb PC66 RAM only costs ~$50 (USD), though you can probably find it cheaper.

[gleaned from: http://www.ramjet.com/g3beige.asp]

yellow,

regarding hayne's quote from another thread.

from personal experience, it ain't true.

EDIT: i don't know what the criteria is for 'Disk is Full', but it's not 90%.

I have 512 MB of RAM and after a week of using my machine without restarts it is not unusual for me to have a dozen or more swap files. That's a GB right there. Of course, I also have a dozen+ apps running, and it takes a week to get to this point. I don't know how the OS goes about freeing up swap files that are no longer needed but after a week or so, I usually have to reboot my machine for some reason, or it'll take matters into its own hands and crash. But the problem described matches what happens to me when I let disk space fall under 1GB. With OS X it is not impossible to use RAM fast. And not just because it allows you to run many many apps at once. Got a lot of finder windows open? A web browser running in the background? A lot of icons in your dock? You will find that just booting up the computer uses 128MB before you launch your first app. I think maxing out the RAM should be done without question.

Indeed it looks like a problem like several of you indicated. After start up is completed the hard disk keeps on making noise, and the free space reduces gradually, until the message appears announcing that there is no space left. This happens in a few minutes (max 5). I tried to follow Djn1's instructions and typed in the terminal ls/private/var/vm, but the message appears that this command does not exist. I can buy some more RAM as suggested, but will this solve this problem?

Claudio

The command you need is:

ls /private/var/vm

Note the space after 'ls'. I would guess that you tried to enter it without the space - hence the message that command does not exist.

ok thanks... I'll try again
correction to what I stated above... I have a total of 352 MB of RAM installed, 32 + 64 + 256 in the 3 available slots

Ok... did that.. after booting I opened the terminal, typed in that command and had already 5 swap files.. typed again and had 6.. then 7... and so on

It seems a little odd that the disk fills up with swap that quickly with just the Finder.
Will more RAM solve the problem? Nope. Help alleviate the problem? Defintely. 768 will give you more elbow room to work with. But it will continually plague you. This might be a good place to buy an old small SCSI hard drive (if memory servers, the ATA HD in the beige desktops are underneath the CD/floppy next to the mortherboard, but there is space for another SCSI drive on top of the large bay next to them, although it could be an ATA ribbon, I don't remember) and point your swap at it. Do a search on here for moving swap to another partition/drive. There are some apps out there to help you do that.

something else is wrong. just leaking.

safe boot. safe login. disable login items. track it down. something is quaffing memory like a freshman at a spring break wet T-yada yada.

% ps axlm | head