Ext3 users - Oct 2002 - Ext-3 journal file growth.

I am amazed that after running Ext3 on our RH 7.2 fileserver for 3 months 
the .journal file has grown to over 30Mb and has exhuasted all the availble 
space on /. with all of the obvisious problems this brings.

Is the Ext 3 file expected to have unlimited root file space to grow it 
.journal file?

If not how on earth is one expected to manage it.

Ken Patching with an unmanagable system thanks to Ext 3.

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 11:53:37AM +0100, Ken Patching
wrote:
> I am amazed that after running Ext3 on our RH 7.2 fileserver for 3 months 
> the .journal file has grown to over 30Mb
No, it hasn't!  30MB is the default journal size for a sufficiently
large filesystem, and the journal file *never* grows.  It can't ---
the ext3 code simply does no regular file IO to the journal, ever, so 
there's no opportunity for the journal file metadata to change in any
way whatsoever.  All journal file IO is done "under the hood" as it
were, submitted directly to the block IO layer.
> and has exhuasted all the availble 
> space on /. with all of the obvisious problems this brings.
> 
> Is the Ext 3 file expected to have unlimited root file space to grow it 
> .journal file?
No.
> Ken Patching with an unmanagable system thanks to Ext 3.
Not due to ext3.  There are many possible reasons for the root fs
filling, such as installing multiple bootable kernels (fills up
/lib/modules), log file growth, large files in /tmp and so on.  The
journal never grows.

Cheers,
 Stephen