I wanted to create archive. I typed: $ sudo tar --one-file-system --same-owner --numeric-owner -cpf /tmp/x.tar . And I saw: tar: /tmp/x.tar: Wrote only 8192 of 10240 bytes tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now Then I discovered that tar filled all space on destination file system. So, error message is misleading. tar should say: no space left on device.