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Operating Systems AIX i-nodes - out of disk space on /tmp Post 302253933 by bakunin on Monday 3rd of November 2008 06:19:05 AM
Old 11-03-2008
When a file is created by a process it gets an inode number and as it is filled with content it gets diskspace allocated.

It is possible to delete a file from one process while it is opened (and written to) by another. A "ls" or similar command will not show this file anymore, still the diskspace (as well as the inode) occupied by the file will remain occupied as long as the process is running. When the process is killed the inode as well as the diskspace is relinquished immediately. In your case tell the software developers that their scripting is bad and/or their software is even worse, because they must somewhere open files which they do not close. Not cleaning up - that is: releasing the resources you allocate - is as bad a behavior in software development as it is in housekeeping

Historically speaking this is one of the worser pranks you could play on your "favourite" systems administrator: create a file (prefereably named with a nonprinting character like "0x255" for instance) in /tmp and write to it from an insuspiciously named background process. Then delete the file from the commandline while the process is running. Wait until /tmp is filled and watch your sysadmin going nuts trying to find what it is - because /tmp seems to be empty and even the list of open file handles will (because of the nonprinting character) not reveal at first glance what is the culprit here.

Ahh, if forgot: a reboot spoils the party therefore do this on a production system where a restart is not so easy to manage.

bakunin
 

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fclose(3S)																fclose(3S)

NAME
fclose(), fflush(), fclose_unlocked(), fflush_unlocked() - close or flush a stream SYNOPSIS
Obsolescent Interfaces DESCRIPTION
causes any buffered data for the named stream to be written out, and the stream to be closed. Buffers allocated by the standard input/out- put system may be freed. is performed automatically for all open files upon calling exit(2). If stream points to an output stream or an update stream in which the most recent operation was output, causes any buffered data for the stream to be written to that file; otherwise any buffered data is discarded. The stream remains open. If stream is a null pointer, performs this flushing action on all currently open streams. Obsolescent Interfaces and close or flush a stream. RETURN VALUE
Upon successful completion, and return 0. Otherwise, they return EOF and set to indicate the error. ERRORS
If or fails, is set to one of: The flag is set for the file descriptor underlying stream and the process would be delayed in the write operation. The file descriptor underlying stream is not valid. An attempt was made to write a file that exceeds the process's file size limit or the maximum file size (see ulimit(2)). or was interrupted by a signal. The process is in a background process group and is attempting to write to its controlling terminal, is set, the process is neither ignoring nor blocking the signal, and the process group of the process is orphaned. There was no free space remaining on the device containing the file. An attempt was made to write to a pipe that is not open for reading by any process. A signal is also sent to the process. Additional values may be set by the underlying and functions (see write(2), lseek(2) and close(2)). WARNINGS
and are obsolescent interfaces supported only for compatibility with existing DCE applications. New multithreaded applications should use and SEE ALSO
close(2), exit(2), lseek(2), write(2), flockfile(3S), fopen(3S), setbuf(3S), thread_safety(5). STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
fclose(3S)
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