--- On Mon, 16/7/12, Bastian Bittorf <[email protected]> wrote: > > there is one known issue on Unix > like systems which may lead to > > the > > case where a file system without file entries may > report no > > available > > space. I do not know if this is the reason for your > trouble, but > > it > > it's better to tell about, as this is not known to all > Unix users. > > > > On Unix like systems it is possible to create (or open > a file) and > > remove the directory entry (unlink) while holding the > file still > > open. > > As long as you do not close all references to the same > file > > descriptor > > the file continues to exist and claims space on the > file system. > > Nobody > > else can see this file or reclaim the space. Only the > process who > > holds > > the file open (or processes if forked and file > descriptor > > inherited) > > can reclaim the space of such an file. As soon as all > references of > > the > > file are closed (may be due to exiting/killing the > holding process) > > the > > used space is reclaimed and everything is back fine. > > > > Some years ago I had trouble on a RAM file system which > got full > > during > > usage, but every time I tried to look into this, there > was enough > > free > > space. The reason for this: Opening the telnet session > closed the > > process holding the open file. After a long time of > debugging a > > uh! a real heisenbug. > > > misbehaved file rotating was localized for the bug. The > process > > rotated the file names but forgot to close the original > file and > > more > > data got appended to the old (invisible) file, while > the testing > > loop > > checked the new (empty) file for it's size to trigger > next file > > rotation ... a trigger which never occurred while the > new file > > stayed > > empty as all new data still got appended to the old > file ... until > > file > > system space exhausted :( > > > > In case this helps to narrow down your trouble. > > > > Harald > > thank you very much for telling the story behind it. > > bye, bastian
On the typical linux system, there is a utility called lsof, for opened files, which can list such opened but unlinked files (among other functionalities). Google-chrome opens a lot of such files while it runs, just an interesting fact; and so does gnome terminal for its scrollback buffers. _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list [email protected] http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
