could not write bytes broken pipe !!!

Linux Support
1

Hello.
I’m getting this message “could not write bytes broken pipe ubuntu” and system is logging off after that.
Actually, it is happening while i;m trying to do my project work and that too when it is taking more time to run the application its occuring.
when i’m running small programs, its well and good. But, this is happening only with large datafiles. can someone help whats going on here?

2

If it’s only happening with large data files, I’d first check the amount of swap space you have … then I’d check the SMART status of the hard drive from within “Disk Utility” … then I’d run fsck on the partition(s) from a LiveCD/LiveUSB.

You can tell the system to automagically run fsck at the next bootup by running:

sudo touch /forcefsck

in a terminal … then rebooting.

You should see fsck doing the file system check during the bootup (at the screen with the 5 bots).

3

HOw do i check them? I don’t know much about these things.

4 
df -h

From the shell. (which you can start with Ctrl+Alt+t)

5 

Inspiron-N4010:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5        46G   17G   27G  38% /
udev            1.9G  4.0K  1.9G   1% /dev
tmpfs           765M  900K  764M   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            1.9G  1.2M  1.9G   1% /run/shm

This is how it looks like in the shell …

6
I'm getting this message "could not write bytes broken pipe ubuntu" and system is logging off after that.

That could be graphics related. I have seen something like this before…
If I remember right purging the (nvidia in my case) drivers and then reinstalling it made it go away.
Just my 2p :wink:

7

Hi rk234

I remember this being a big issue on the Mint forums, as it seemed to coincide with the release of Mint 14, this was apparently a fix

  1. Boot into recovery mode
  2. Repair broken packages
  3. Hit the continue boot button
  4. Log in to the desktop
  5. Reboot
  6. Log in normally

And it’s gone!

I’m not sure if this worked for everyone as I didn’t keep up with it even though I had the same issue but I ignored it as it wasn’t really causing me any problems but here’s a link to that thread, hopefully it will give some more insight, and maybe even a solution

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=104084

Good luck

Graeme

8

Hi Emegra,

I came across some threads on the mint issue, but i didn’t go through that procedure because i had not installed any kind of Mint versions and hence i thought that as a different case.
Anyhow thanks for ur suggestion and i’ll look into it.

@SeZo
Might be i have to consider that too … But i’m running a program which is taking a lot of memory to its execution and will that have a effect on graphics ?

9

Can you send the output from:

free -m

Which version of Ubuntu ?

Can you also explain what it is you’re doing when the crash occurs.

A “broken pipe” is (AFAIK) when one command/application/process is writing output to another (ie. piping output) and the pipe becomes broken by say the receiving application exiting unexpectedly/crashing.

So YES it could be from a crashed graphics driver/Xserver.

Oddly, I too seem to remember Ubuntu having issues with the nvidia drivers that caused this message to be displayed … but (AFAIK) it’s not necessarily the only thing that can cause this message, and if it ONLY happens with large “data files”, I still think it’s likely memory related.
(possibly the nvidia drivers crashing when swap is used up)

If you’re using the nvidia drivers, it may be an idea to go to “Additional Drivers”, and swap to the drivers from “Updates”, and see what happens.
(or do as SeZo suggests and purge/reinstall the current drivers)

–