Linux Administration Cookbook

Don't overlook the simple

 

Alongside date, another command I run almost as an impulse is df -h:

$ df -hFilesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 38G 4.8G 33G 13% /devtmpfs 235M 0 235M 0% /devtmpfs 244M 0 244M 0% /dev/shmtmpfs 244M 4.5M 240M 2% /runtmpfs 244M 0 244M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup/dev/sda2 1014M 63M 952M 7% /boottmpfs 49M 0 49M 0% /run/user/1000

Like time being wrong, cosmically stupid errors can occur when disk space has run out, with no actual indication as to what the real problem is. Programs rarely print I can't write to this file, so I'm broken, and instead usually settle on cryptic, baffling, and altogether mind-numbing errors that make no sense on the face of it. 

Check disk space second.