<story><title>All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk</title><url>https://brianschrader.com/archive/why-all-my-servers-have-an-8gb-empty-file/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tehjoker</author><text>This reminds me of the reserve tank toggle on some motorcycles. When you run out of gas, you switch the toggle and drive directly to a gas station.</text></item><item><author>geocrasher</author><text>For everyone saying &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#x27;t a real solution!&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d like to explain why I think you&amp;#x27;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;1) It&amp;#x27;s not intended to be a Real Solution(tm). It&amp;#x27;s intended to buy the admin some time to solve the Real Issue.&lt;p&gt;2) Having a failsafe on standby such as this will save an admin&amp;#x27;s butt when it&amp;#x27;s 2am and PagerDuty won&amp;#x27;t shut up, and you&amp;#x27;re just awake enough to apply a temp fix and work on it in the morning.&lt;p&gt;3) Because &amp;quot;FIX IT NOW OR ELSE&amp;quot; is a thing. Okay, sure. Null the file and then fill it with 7GB. Problem solved, for now. Everybody is happy and now I can work on the Real Problem: Bob won&amp;#x27;t stop hoarding spam.&lt;p&gt;That is all.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rcthompson</author><text>Motorboat fuel tanks have a reserve as well. It&amp;#x27;s just a raised area that splits the bottom of the tank into 2 separate concave areas. One of the concave areas contains the end of the fuel line, and the other doesn&amp;#x27;t. When you run out of gas, you tip the tank up to dump the remaining gas from the other basin into the main one, and then you restart the engine (or keep it from stopping at all if you&amp;#x27;re quick enough on the draw) and head for the docks.</text></comment>
<story><title>All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk</title><url>https://brianschrader.com/archive/why-all-my-servers-have-an-8gb-empty-file/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tehjoker</author><text>This reminds me of the reserve tank toggle on some motorcycles. When you run out of gas, you switch the toggle and drive directly to a gas station.</text></item><item><author>geocrasher</author><text>For everyone saying &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#x27;t a real solution!&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d like to explain why I think you&amp;#x27;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;1) It&amp;#x27;s not intended to be a Real Solution(tm). It&amp;#x27;s intended to buy the admin some time to solve the Real Issue.&lt;p&gt;2) Having a failsafe on standby such as this will save an admin&amp;#x27;s butt when it&amp;#x27;s 2am and PagerDuty won&amp;#x27;t shut up, and you&amp;#x27;re just awake enough to apply a temp fix and work on it in the morning.&lt;p&gt;3) Because &amp;quot;FIX IT NOW OR ELSE&amp;quot; is a thing. Okay, sure. Null the file and then fill it with 7GB. Problem solved, for now. Everybody is happy and now I can work on the Real Problem: Bob won&amp;#x27;t stop hoarding spam.&lt;p&gt;That is all.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hprotagonist</author><text>The bikes I&amp;#x27;ve had that have had reserve tanks have also been old enough to raise the disconcerting follow-on question, which is: &amp;quot;is the reserve gas also full of sludgey crap that&amp;#x27;s settled in the tank and hasn&amp;#x27;t been disturbed really in a year, and am i about to run that through my poor carbs?&amp;quot;</text></comment>