FILE_ERROR_NO_SPACE error

[MarionGee]

Have this error flagged I don't know what to do about it or how to close it:

IO error: .../003144.log: FILE_ERROR_NO_SPACE (ChromeMethodBFE: 3::WritableFileAppend::8)

[ghostwords]

Hello!

Where do you see this error? Feel free to drag and drop a screenshot here.

Is your drive running out of space?

[AndrewGatenbyVS]

I get the same warning showing on all sites. Only started showing today. Hard drive still has space available (around 1Gb).

Chrome 63.0.3239.132
MacOS 10.12.6

Edit: Updated to Chrome 64.0.3282.167 that had been awaiting a relaunch, and this resolved the warning 👍

[ghostwords]

Hi @AndrewGatenbyVS, thanks for sharing a screenshot!

This is the error notification I added as part of #1848. It shows errors that happen while trying to save Privacy Badger state (your Badger's knowledge of who the trackers are, basically) to disk. Before #1848, the errors would still happen, but you wouldn't be notified in the UI.

If this was a QUOTA_BYTES error, I would say your Badger ran out of allowed space, but this FILE_ERROR_NO_SPACE error suggests your Chrome profile disk is out of space. I am not yet sure though. Could you check if this is the case?

[ghostwords]

Ah, I see now that you wrote that you still have around a gigabyte free. That does seem relatively low ... It's possible Chrome starts running into FILE_ERROR_NO_SPACE errors close to the disk actually being full.

[ghostwords]

@MarionGee Is this still a problem? Have you checked if your disk is low on space?

[piquan]

(Different user): I saw this message today. I had run out of space on my disk yesterday, and cleaned some up; I may have not noticed the message until today. The precise message is:
IO error: .../002699.log: FILE_ERROR_NO_SPACE (ChromeMethodBFE: 3::WritableFileAppend::8)

I see that ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Local Extension Settings/pkehgijcmpdhfbdbbnkijodmdjhbjlgp is currently at 3072 kB (according to du -k). According to https://developer.chrome.com/apps/storage#property-local, the per-extension storage limit is 5,242,880 bytes. Since leveldb compresses its data (at least by default; not sure about in Chrome), I wouldn't be surprised if I'm near the limit.

I tried to check on the actual usage from within the Privacy Badger background page using chrome.storage.local.getBytesInUse, but seem to have done something that destabilized Privacy Badger. I'm going to restart Chrome and update this comment.

[ghostwords]

@piquan As I wrote above, FILE_ERROR_NO_SPACE seems to be about your disk being out of space, not Privacy Badger.

What may be confusing here is that Privacy Badger's error message only goes away on Privacy Badger (browser) restart, not directly following freeing up disk space.

To check how much extension storage your Privacy Badger uses, see #1902 (comment).

[piquan]

Yeah, I figured it was a disk space thing. It sounded like you were somewhat unsure with the previous report, so I decided to get a little more information and see if it helped. Thanks!

[ghostwords]

Yep, I wasn't sure earlier, but now it seems more clear. Thank you for helping clear it up!

[ghostwords]

We may want to update the error message to go away and stay away after being dismissed by the user.

The behavior would be the same as now except when the user is able to address the problem (such as by freeing up disk space), the message would no longer reappear during browsing after being dismissed once (until the error starts happening again).

Should probably wait to do this until after #1899 is merged.

[ghostwords]

We may also want to just hide these errors since they are not relevant to Privacy Badger. Or replace the raw FILE_ERROR_NO_SPACE output with a friendlier message, like "Your disk seems to be low on space"?