Can someone help me fix this error?

[Hanna Roberts]

I've been using the :wq command in vim all day and all of a sudden after I tested my program I get the error attached when I try to use :wq or any other command other than :q!
Could someone help me fix this? Im unsure what happened.

[Tim Holloway]

"fsync" is the filesystem synchronization function. It basically means that the file could not be properly written.

Apparently a number of things can cause this, but these days, the prime suspects would be that the filesystem that you are trying to write to is full or there's a problem with a network file share (if you're saving a network file). I would also have said a hardware error at one time. Not so sure now.

Try writing the file to a more reliable location and then see if you can copy from there to the save location.

[Hanna Roberts]

So I ssh into a school server and work in there, im not sure if thats what you mean by network file? I tried making a file in a different spot to see if that would help but I had the same problem. Im new to using linux/unix so I dont really know much

[Tim Holloway]

Try this:

1. Hit Ctrl-Z. That should pause vi, print a "Stopped" message and give you a command prompt.
2. Type the command 'df -h ." Note the "." at the end. It's important, as is the space before and after the "-h".

That should give you a disk space report something like this:

[timh@a64a prepo]$ df -h .
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
www3:gl_filer    29G   13G   15G  47% /export/filer

If the filesystem is a local disk, it might be something like /dev/sda1 or /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-Home

If "use" is 100%, then the disk is full. if you can, delete some files. if not, you need someone to give you more disk space.

Finally, to resume vi, type the command "fg" at the command prompt.

If the disk was not full and you still cannot write, then contact the system administrator for the machine you are logged into and report the problem. It's probably something you can't fix. But hopefully, they can!

[Hanna Roberts]

Thanks for the help, I had logged in a few hours later and everything was fine again, so maybe it was a problem on the administrators end

[fred rosenberger]

Hanna Roberts wrote:So I ssh into a school server and work in there, im not sure if thats what you mean by network file?

These days it is not uncommon to have many computers (unix boxes, pcs, macs, etc) all connect to another box that is basically a HUGE set of disk drives. The box is built to be super-efficient at it, since it really only has to serve files.  It also makes it easier to add more disk space, manage the software for it, etc., as everything is in one spot, rather than spread out over 50 individual pc's, linux boxes, macs, etc.

So a network file basically means a file that is saved onto a hard disk that you connect to via the network/internet, instead of on your local machine.  If you ssh from your pc to a unix server, that unix box may then have a network attached storage device for saving files.  (It would also most likely have a local, smaller disk).

[Tim Holloway]

Yeah, I suppose I should clarify, even though the problem is resolved.

What Fred refers to is the difference between files located in your own computer box and those located in some other computer box (often these days, that can include a box with nothing but disk drives in it!)

You access those "other box" files using network filesystem drivers via a process called "network sharing". In Windows, they usually just call it a Windows File Share. In Unix/Linux, it may be NFS, CIFS/Samba (the universal version of the Windows share), or specialized distributed filesystems like glusterfs.

But SSH logins aren't the same thing. When you log into another computer using SSH, that computer becomes, in effect, "your own computer", so what constitutes "other box" files changes. If my computer is named "Ron" and the SSH machine I'm logging into is named "Fred" and there's a network file server machine named "George", then it's likely that my remote session on Fred can read and write files on George. On the other hand, if Ron is a remote dialup machine not on the same LAN as Fred and George, then Ron may not be able to access the George files directly. By using SSH, you effectively leave your seat on the Ron machine and sit in front of the Fred machine.

SSH is not filesharing, though, so as a user of the Fred machine, you won't be able to access files on the Ron machine.

Hope that didn't just make things more confusing!