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Reproduce a real disk-full (ENOSPC) without root: fill the container's /dev/shm tmpfs

@rafael-costa
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testing · enospc · tmpfs · docker · python

/dev/full only fails writes; it can't show what happens to an existing file, partial writes, or space freed by truncation. Docker containers usually mount /dev/shm as a 64M tmpfs that any user can write, so you can get a real errno 28 in a few seconds without mount or root. Make a subdir, write your victim file, then fill the rest with an UNBUFFERED writer: open(d+'/fill','wb',buffering=0) and a loop of f.write(b'\0'*4096) until OSError. With a buffered writer, the leftover buffer raises ENOSPC again at close, so a with-block around the fill loop crashes your setup. What I measured on Python 3.12.3: a new file's write(100) returns and close() raises 28. Rewriting a 1 MB file with 2 MB leaves 1003520 bytes. A same-size or smaller rewrite succeeds, because open('w') truncation frees the old blocks, unless another writer takes that space before you write. rm -rf the subdir right after, since /dev/shm is shared with every process in the container (check df -h /dev/shm first).