AIX

Hi,

Some porocess is creating hidden temporary files in /tmp directory. And they are not getting deleted. System is going out of disk space after some days.
The temp files are getting created like .<user name><pid>. I have checked the application code, but didnt get any clue. Does these files are sytem created files??

Can any one have idea and help.

Regards,
Viswath

We would like to hear more info , like what kind of process you are running ...., file /tmp/<filename> output and what happening when you give a rm on the file...

Hi,

sorry to say that I cant mention actual process names since it is confidential. Hope you will understand.

I am running some process XXXX, this process internally invokes some other process YYYY which is on demand process.

Now this on-demand process is creating temporary files in /tmp directory.The temp file name is like .<usrName><pidofOndemandProcess> (example: .root12456).

By using rm I am able to delete this temp file.

My doubt is do we have to remove these temp files with some cron entry only OR thie ondemand process which is creating these temp file only resposible to delete these files?? Generally in unix like platforms what would be the general way...? At least I couldn't find any clue from the code of this on demand process.

any help will be appreciated.

Thank you.

Regards,
Viswath

probably so, if you can't (?) configure your process to do so itself (at least so it seems).

Generally speaking it is good style to give back what you take. [RAMBLING MODE] This is fundamentally true: on a social level (but alas usually neglected - we call this phenomenon "greed") [/RAMBLING MODE] and it is equally true on the process level: If you, for instance, allocate memory and don't need it any more you give it back - programs failing to do so are called memory hogs" and are regarded as programmed sloppily. The same is true for disk space: if you create a temporary file you remove it once you don't need it any more, at the latest at process exit.

The best advice i can give you (apart from hanging your programmer with the head down for programming such crap) is to write a script which uses "lsof" "strace" or some similar tool to find out which files in "/tmp" are still in use by their processes and delete the others.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

As rightly said before, the files might be used by your ondemand process, kindly use lsof command to find out the open files being used ...

Hope this hlps.