Out of Resources Error - Space Still Remains

[Burton_Gustice]

I ran some SAS code overnight, but when I checked on it the next morning everything had been paused/interrupted with this pop-up:

My understanding is this gets caused by trying to write to a folder that doesn't have enough space available (e.g. the work directory). However, I checked the hard drive and there was still plenty of space available. Additionally, I tried clicking "Retry" without changing anything and it continued just fine...

I thought it was possibly an issue with the computer's resources being used by other processes but the IT department took a look and confirmed nothing was maxed out during the time period. Does anyone have thoughts on what might've caused it?

If it helps, I'm using SAS 9.4 (English) and the process was interrupted during a PROC SORT step. I'm thinking about switching to PROC SQL logic since I believe that's more efficient resource-wise, but I've also run the code again (start to finish) and that error didn't pop up. So all in all I'm unsure if it's really a problem with the SAS code or something related to the computer's hardware...

[PaigeMiller]

Out of memory could mean (not enough memory) or it could mean (not enough CPU available) or it could mean (not enough disk space). The folder /disk you are trying to write to is probably not the problem, it could be the disk where the temporary files are written.

[Burton_Gustice]

Is that different from the work directory? Because I checked both the directory where data sets get saved and the work directory where temporary files are stored and both still had plenty of space (>900gbs) available. The thing that confuses me is how it continued just fine the next morning without me changing/deleting anything before clicking "Retry"...

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

You'll want to work with SAS tech Support on this one, there are too many possibilities.
Are you running locally or on a server? Are you working with dedicated space or do you have limits set up by your IT area? Do you have virus scanning software? Where are you generating temp files? Are other processes possibly running and creating files that could impact this at the same time? Someone else's processes if it's a shared software? Did IT push out a software update at the same time that had a bunch of temporary files that took up the space? .....you get the idea.

[Burton_Gustice]

That makes sense. Thanks for pointing me in a direction to investigate!