Isilon: What is the /base partition on an Isilon cluster

When looking at the partitions on an Isilon node, or output from commands such as the df command, a /base partition is seen and shows as full. For example (your node may look different as this is a virtual node):


tf80-1# df -h
Filesystem               Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/mirror/root0        1.9G    412M    1.3G    23%    /
devfs                    1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
/dev/mirror/var0         956M     65M    814M     7%    /var
/dev/mirror/var-crash    2.8G    4.8M    2.6G     0%    /var/crash
/dev/mirror/keystore      60M     10K     55M     0%    /keystore
/dev/md0                  60M    812K     54M     1%    /tmp/ufp
/dev/md1.uzip            104M     98M   -2.9M   103%    /base
OneFS                     72G     24G     18G    57%    /ifs


This was added in the newer OneFS builds to support older IMDD nodes that have a smaller root partition. It is not of concern that this partition is full, and nothing should be removed. 

This is a compressed, read-only filesystem and files are moved here and are symbolically linked from their original places,

As an example:
 

TF8002-1# ls -l /usr/local/apache2/icons|more

total 2

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    36 Aug 17  2016 README -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/README

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    41 Aug 17  2016 README.html -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/README.html

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    35 Aug 17  2016 a.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/a.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    35 Aug 17  2016 a.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/a.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    45 Aug 17  2016 alert.black.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/alert.black.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    45 Aug 17  2016 alert.black.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/alert.black.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    43 Aug 17  2016 alert.red.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/alert.red.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    43 Aug 17  2016 alert.red.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/alert.red.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    43 Aug 17  2016 apache_pb.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/apache_pb.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    43 Aug 17  2016 apache_pb.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/apache_pb.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    44 Aug 17  2016 apache_pb2.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/apache_pb2.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    44 Aug 17  2016 apache_pb2.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/apache_pb2.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    48 Aug 17  2016 apache_pb2_ani.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/apache_pb2_ani.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    38 Aug 17  2016 back.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/back.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    38 Aug 17  2016 back.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/back.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    43 Aug 17  2016 ball.gray.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/ball.gray.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    43 Aug 17  2016 ball.gray.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/ball.gray.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    42 Aug 17  2016 ball.red.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/ball.red.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    42 Aug 17  2016 ball.red.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/ball.red.png

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    40 Aug 17  2016 binary.gif -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/binary.gif

lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    40 Aug 17  2016 binary.png -> /base/usr/local/apache2/icons/binary.png

This it is expected to be on each node, and is part of the operating system.