Getting around insufficient space issues

[tomcmacdonald]

Running SAS 9.4 on UNIX I'm running into some space issues while doing a join between a few tables.

These are the error messages:

ERROR: Insufficient space in file WORK.'SASTMP-000000219'n.UTILITY.

ERROR: File WORK.'SASTMP-000000219'n.UTILITY is damaged. I/O processing did not complete.

ERROR: There is not enough WORK disk space to store the results of an internal sorting phase.

ERROR: An error has occurred. 

I'm minimizing the number of datasets I keep on WORK putting them instead on the local drive.  I'm using the COMPRESS option. This join is pretty critical to my process. How do I get around these error messages?

[DavidPope · Accepted solution]

Sounds like wherever your WORK is writing too may be a shared area and as such you may need to ask your UNIX administrator to increase the disk space associated with this particular area.

[tomcmacdonald]

I solved this by clearing my WORK directory which was being filled from a previous job.