FreeNAS issue: unable to delete data?!

I ran into an interesting issue on one of my FreeNAS servers where I had let the zfs storage pool fill up and I was unable to delete any data.

My freenas Version: FreeNAS-9.1.1-RELEASE-x86

[root@mackynas1] /mnt/share1/# rm -f test.dat
 rm: test.dat: Disc quota exceeded

I had a couple options:

  1. Expand the pool by getting rid of the reservation I had set, then delete data.
  2. Add physical drives to my NAS, then expand the volume
  3. Be stubborn and find a way to fix this.

#1 is too easy, and #2 cost money… so #3 it is. Luckily I had found a workaround on the FreeNAS forums where you zero out a file you would like to delete. Here I need to delete test.dat:

[root@mackynas1] /mnt/share1/# cp /dev/null test.dat
[root@mackynas1] /mnt/share1/# rm -f test.dat

Now I was able to delete that test.dat file and any other big files I didn’t care too much for.

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