I recently faced an overflow issue on /tmp. I don't have a separate /tmp partition, and there is 17% free in / – then why did I get an overflow tmp filesystem?# /etc/fstab: static file system information.## Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).## <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0/dev/mapper/safesquid-root /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1# /boot was on /dev/sda1 during installationUUID=d029e04b-11e9-42e1-b1d3-9cde73cb3b67 /boot           ext2    defaults        0       2/dev/mapper/safesquid-swap_1 none            swap    sw              0       0mount output/dev/mapper/safesquid-root on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)overflow on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,size=1048576,mode=1777)rpc_pipefs on /run/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw)root@safesquid:~# free -m             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cachedMem:          2009        182       1826          0          9         48-/+ buffers/cache:        124       1885Swap:          715        130        585root@safesquid:~# uname -aLinux safesquid 2.6.32-41-server #94-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 6 18:15:07 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/LinuxI'm running Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS.I also checked df -i, there are free inodes.
Overflow /tmp mounted when there is free space on /
ubuntu;tmp