From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 19 18:23:14 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6DEEF16A4BF for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:23:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zoot.lafn.org (zoot.lafn.ORG [206.117.18.6]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D154A43FF7 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:23:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bc979@lafn.org) Received: from lafn.org (host-66-81-25-233.rev.o1.com [66.81.25.233]) (authenticated bits=0) by zoot.lafn.org (8.12.3p3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id h8K1N7Tw013144 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO) for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:23:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bc979@lafn.org) Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:23:07 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) From: Doug Hardie To: FreeBSD Questions Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <3F6BA134.7040500@trini0.org> Message-Id: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) Subject: File deletion problem X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 01:23:14 -0000 I have a situation that I have not been able to track down where on one of my servers some process is writing a log file (I presume) and it is getting rotated out from under it. The net result is that the log continues to be written to the original file which eventually is deleted thus leaving no trace of who or what. It takes several months before its size becomes noticable, but eventually get grows to consume remaining disk space. Given that the file has an inode but no directory entry, how do you find it? All I have been able to come up with is to use fstat to find all the open files inodes and then to search with ls for each by hand and removing those I can find. Unfortunately this is a large web server with lots of files. Today I moved some of the log files onto a different disk to see if the problem moves. That would narrow down the search considerably. But I suspect I will have to wait a couple months before I can see the effects of the hidden file.