Question

We've been happily enjoying TWiki for about a month now, thank you for a wonderful fun it's been. Last night on saving an entry, this is the error that came up:

Topic save error During save of file MT.WebHome an error was found by the version control system. Please notify your Wiki administrator. /usr/bin/ci -q -l -m'none' -t-none -w'EmptyPages' /home/venus/public_html/wiki/data/MT/WebHome.txt 2>&1 Unable to create temp directory: Too many links

It does this now on every topic save.

I don't know of anything remarkable or different that happened right before this error, and no changes have been made to the TWiki code except for the layout customizations we did when first installed.

Twiki was installed first on my server, then moved to it's new home by copying over the files, resetting permissions and reconfiguring. It's been in the new place for a few weeks now and we haven't experienced anything odd before last night.

I don't have any of the server details for the new location but if more information would help I will find out whatever it is. I've looked all over these support topics and found some that are close, but didn't seem to be this exact problem. If I've missed where this explained, please be so kind as to point me in the right direction. Thank you in advance for any advice. We love and miss our wiki!

-- BrennaCook - 12 Apr 2003

More details from another team member

• TWiki version: 01 Feb 2003
• Perl version: 5.006001
• Web server & version: Apache 1.3.27 (Unix)
• Server OS: Linux
• Web browser & version: multiple browsers
• Client OS: multiple OSs

It appears that the files under the data folder are getting renamed when we try to edit them. Instead of showing WebHome.txt,v the file has been renamed to ,WebHome.txt, and a lock file has been created at the same time. I can't quite figure out how or why its doing that, as its always acted fine for us until now!

-- KristineBeeson - 12 Apr 2003

Answer

I have never seen that message, and a search on google did not turn out anything useful. Seems like an RCS thingy. Some things to check: Do you have enough disk space? Are there too many files in the temp directory? Is the temp directory writeable by your cgi-bin user?

-- PeterThoeny - 12 Apr 2003

We have 432 megs of space available. In terms of the temp directory, I'm not sure where that would be? The error message says it's unable to create the temp directory, so doesn't that mean it doesn't exist? I don't see any directories called temp in the Wiki folders, so I am not sure how we'd set permissions on it. Do we need to create one ourselves?

-- GirlieMatters - 12 Apr 2003

That is my exact question about the temp directory. Does that mean a directory on the server that we don't have access to, or a TWiki temp directory that I didn't set up right? I too googled the error until my eyes fell out.

-- BrennaCook - 12 Apr 2003

It's creating a new file in the data/MT directory with a , in front of it when you get the error... I haven't seen it do that before. Please holler if a link would help at all, PeterThoeny and thank you for your help.

-- BrennaCook - 12 Apr 2003

Oops sorry, kristine already said that. :P I'll be quiet now. :P

-- BrennaCook - 12 Apr 2003

We did a search and found out that usr/bin/ci definately has something to do with RCS - I'm wondering if the permissions on the lib/Twiki/Store/RCS* modules aren't right? They are set to 644 right now, but there's nothing that I can find on the server that has changed; and the file dates for those are from when I uploaded them. I don't see that we have anything with RCS in its name in our installed perl module; should we? I wish I knew more about this stuff, but I'm drawing a blank!

-- KristineBeeson - 13 Apr 2003

TWiki uses RCS for revision control, ci is the command to check in a new version of a page. Many Unix programs use a temp directory, usually /tmp. I am not sure about RCS but you can check, http://www.gnu.org/directory/rcs.html. Are there too many files in the temp directory? Is the temp directory writeable by your cgi-bin user?

-- PeterThoeny - 13 Apr 2003

The 'too many links' message is due to a Linux VFS (kernel virtual file system) limit based on some quick searching. See this message and Google:linux+%22too+many+links%22 - latter shows that a kernel recompilation fixed the problem for at least one person. To diagnose this, do ls | wc -l in any large directories that you have and let us know the output. It may be that the filesystem your site is on is already 'full' in sense of max number of filenames (links) in filesystem, even if there is enough disk space left.

Doing touch foo.temp in the TWiki directories in question (data/MT) should also result in this error, if this line of reasoning is right. If you can get this command to fail, you should then be able to hand over to your system administrator as it's not a TWiki setup problem.

Checking the Apache error log may provide full pathname to where the error is. Failing that, see TWikiDebugging to enable the _traceExec feature in Store.pm which will show you exactly what commands TWiki is running, which may provide more info.

The fact that TWiki was working fine and just started doing this recently also indicates it is probably a capacity problem of this type.

-- RichardDonkin - 14 Apr 2003

Since it is complaining on the temp directory, how about cleaning up /tmp first?

-- PeterThoeny - 14 Apr 2003

Should there be a tmp file inside the twiki folders that you are referring to? The only tmp folder I can find on our accounts is storing stats; and the server status shows that the space used on the usr/ and var/ directories are fairly low.

I'll try to get Girlie to do touch -- she's the one with full access to the account. Thanks

-- KristineBeeson - 14 Apr 2003

Every Unix system has a temprary directory called /tmp, located in the root, and writeable by all users. It could be that there are too many files in that directory.

-- PeterThoeny - 15 Apr 2003

Indeed, the administrator found something amiss on the server (not anything from us, afaik... apparently we just suffered because it filled up the tmp ) so yay! Thanks for your wonderful help!

Now we are able to edit topics, but this is the error: /usr/bin/ci -q -l -m'none' -t-none -w'EmptyPages' /home/venus/public_html/wiki/data/MT/WebHome.txt 2>&1 ci: RCS file /home/venus/public_html/wiki/data/MT/WebHome.txt,v is in use

The changes go through and are saved on the page, though. It does this on every page I tried. Any advice on this is appreciated a lot!

-- BrennaCook - 15 Apr 2003

This looks somewhat related to RCSLockErrors - did you re-lock the built-in topics that come with TWiki (including the _default directory used to create new webs)? If not, see TWikiInstallationGuide.

-- RichardDonkin - 17 Apr 2003

Yes, it appears that deleting those files that were generated with a comma in front of the name took care of it!!! Yay, thank you for the wonderful support!

-- BrennaCook - 19 Apr 2003