Just a thought here - I've seen *exactly* (no inodes free, and also with
src tarball !) the same kind of messages installing NetBSD i386 recently -
it appears that the is a bug in the installer scripts.
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2000/03/02/0020.html

If it is of the same roots, then

export TMPDIR=/<somewhere>

should get rid of it.

Andrei

> > > 2. tar -xzvf pkgsrc.tgz -C / (got error below)
> > >
> > > here is a strange error i got:
> > > ---cut---
> > > /: create/symlink failed, no inodes free
> > > tar: Could not create directory pkgsrc/www/navigator3 : No such file or
> > > director
> > > y
> > > pkgsrc/www/navigator3/CVS/
> > >
> > > /: create/symlink failed, no inodes free
> > > tar: Could not create directory pkgsrc/www/navigator3/CVS : No such
> > file or
> > > dire
> > > ctory
> > > pkgsrc/www/navigator3/CVS/Root
> > >
> > > /: create/symlink failed, no inodes free
> > > ---cut---
> > >
> > > how come the system's default settings don't have enough inodes to
> > handle a
> > > simple operation like that? or is something else i should be looking into?
> >
> >Looks like you tried to fit source trees into the root FS .. they usually
> >go into /usr/... or on some FS that has enough room. It was just a tossup
> >whether you ran out of inodes first or space first.
> >

[...]

> alpha500# df -k
> Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
> /dev/sd0a      127431    62708    58351    51%    /
> /dev/sd0d     1601733   426740  1094906    28%    /usr