topic Re: Disc space is gradually growing in Operating System - HP-UX

Disc space is gradually growing

tslingaraju — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:27:01 GMT

When I start my application (weblogic) having lot of IO activity means read from a flat file, partition (usr/test) usage keeps on increasing from 40% and reaches 100% (6GB). Once it reaches 100% applications hangs.
There is no file (including hidden) generated in the partition usr/test.
Once the application is shutdown disc usage will be back to 40%.

My question is when there are no files generated why disc space is used and also
I would like to know command to find which are all the process accessing the partition usr/test.

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

harry d brown jr — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:32:10 GMT

If not already installed, get "lsof" : http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.77/

live free or die
harry d brown jr

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

Marvin Strong — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:33:54 GMT

fuser -c /usr/test

that is if /usr/test is it own filesystem.

lsof is better sometimes, but fuser comes with the system.

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

Steven E. Protter — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:45:25 GMT

Shalom,

Improperly patched, system and/or application, weblogic is quite famous for trouble.

I would suggest checking patching of both the OS and weblogic and perhaps accommodating this growth with a larger filesystem.

You might also have weblogic configured for temporary files in a bad location, that should be checked.

SEP

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

James R. Ferguson — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:48:42 GMT

Hi:

You asked why it (*appears*) that no files are generated and yet disk utilization grows.

It is a common practice to create (open) a temporary file in a program and immediately 'unlink(2)' it. THis is the underlying system call to remove a file. Once unlinked, only the owning process can access the file. At process termination, the file and any allocated space vanish. The downside is that it is more difficult to find who or what is consuming space in a filesystem when something goes wrong.

Running 'glance' or 'lsof' should assist you in in identifying the process in question, however, if your application needs more space, you are going to have to configure more, or change (configure) the application to use a different, larger filesystem.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

tslingaraju — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 07:06:52 GMT

Lsof is not working I will download from http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.77/
Even fuser is not working, where to download.

Application was working fine from past 3 years. Just from 2 months this problem started.

du command will not show any increase in usage of the partition(du -sk).
bdf command will show the increase the usage.

Actually load on the site is very less. IO activity is done by the scheduler in the application that periodically checks the files in particular directory and read the data and insert to the database.

If temporary file is created it should reflect in (du -sk).

I am thinking is there any paging or swapping is happening in the partition.

This is the problem our client is facing; tomorrow I will be in client place to solve the issue. So I am collecting all possible option.

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

Patrick Wallek — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:44:07 GMT

fuser is a system command. You do not need to download it. However, you do need root access in order to see what you want to see.

# /usr/sbin/fuser -cu /usr/test

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

Jaime Bolanos Rojas. — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:01:59 GMT

Tslingaraju,

At the beginning I thought about a swap issue, even thought after reading everybody's answers they are most likely to be right than the swap theory, but you never know.

Try with vmstat 2 50 and watch for the po field it should be 0.

Also with swapinfo -tam check to see if /usr/test was configured as swap device or so.

Regards,

Jaime.

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

A. Clay Stephenson — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:03:40 GMT

Almost certainly JRF has identified the culprit. This is absolutely standard behavior for temporary files --- and after the unlink is done there is no directory entry associated with the file. Also, there are no "hidden" files in UNIX. You should study your application's documentation to see if there is an environment variable or a configuration setting that will allow the temporary files to be written elsewhere.

Re: Disc space is gradually growing

tslingaraju — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 01:22:34 GMT

One more information is that earlier when this issue started weblogic home directory partition (/usr/opt/weblogic) means where weblogic installed was growing.
Some one suggested in the net to create TEMP environmental variable in HP-UX and point it to some different (/usr/test) partition. After that partition â /usr/testâ starts growing.

TEMP variable is not all used in weblogic.
is HP-UX is using this variable.

Any how I will work out with the solution provided by you people and share more detail.