topic Re: Display File Filling /tmp in Operating System - HP-UX

Display File Filling /tmp

MikeL_4 — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:41:41 GMT

I have a server that someone is running a job on during the day that fills up /tmp, than after about 15 minutes /tmp is back to it's normal 3% Full...

As root I've done an ls -al on /tmp but it does not show any file that is being written to /tmp that is filling it up...

Is there a way to find out what file is being written to /tmp and then deleted afterwards so I can get the developer to cease or at least use there own file system for this temporary file ??

Re: Display File Filling /tmp

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:49:15 GMT

Hi:

This sounds as if a process is creating a temporary file and immediately unlinking (removing) it while using it (keeping it open). This is a common technique. The advantage is that when the process terminates, the programmer doesn't need to perform any other actions to remove the file. The fact that the file's link count is zero, means that the disk blocks used are returned to the system.

You can use 'lsof' to see the files with a link count of zero (0):

# lsof +L1 +D /tmp

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Display File Filling /tmp

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:51:21 GMT

Hi (again):

If you don't have 'lsof' installed (and you should!), fetch and install it (no reboot required) from here:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.80/

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Display File Filling /tmp

Paul Sperry — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:51:31 GMT

If it were me I'd make a tmp directory in his home directory then set the tmp env in his .profile.

export TMP=/home/username/tmp

That way he could shoot himself in the foot.

Re: Display File Filling /tmp

Dennis Handly — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:10:36 GMT

>fills up /tmp,

Is this /tmp or /var/tmp?
The latter is what users should be using.

>Paul: tmp env in his .profile.
>export TMP=/home/username/tmp

The official variable is TMPDIR for tempnam(3).
I'm not sure if tmpfile(3) removes the file at the start or at the end?

Re: Display File Filling /tmp

Prashanth Waugh — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:14:42 GMT

Hi,

you can find the user or process which is the culprit for creating the filw in /tmp

Check who is using the /tmp using
1) fuser -cu /tmp
then u will get the pid

2)ps -ef |grep
you will get the idea which is processess and which user is resoponsible for it

Regards
Atul

Re: Display File Filling /tmp

Anka — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:10:18 GMT

With the following command you can determine which files grow in /tmp:

#du -akx /tmp | sort -nr > output1.txt

then execute the same after a while...

#du -akx /tmp | sort -nr > output2.txt

and compare the both files to see what grows:

#diff output1.txt output2.txt

Re: Display File Filling /tmp

MikeL_4 — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:34:41 GMT

Thanks