Out of Space Behavior

File system snapshots are inexpensive and easy to create in ZFS. Snapshots are common in most ZFS environments. For information about ZFS snapshots, see Chapter 7, Working With Oracle Solaris ZFS Snapshots and Clones.

The presence of snapshots can cause some unexpected behavior when you attempt to free disk space. Typically, given appropriate permissions, you can remove a file from a full file system, and this action results in more disk space becoming available in the file system. However, if the file to be removed exists in a snapshot of the file system, then no disk space is gained from the file deletion. The blocks used by the file continue to be referenced from the snapshot.

As a result, the file deletion can consume more disk space because a new version of the directory needs to be created to reflect the new state of the namespace. This behavior means that you can receive an unexpected ENOSPC or EDQUOT error when attempting to remove a file.