Directory size huge even when no files are present

[sivaraj_1]

I have created a directory in which frequent creation/updation/deletion of files happens. The size of the directory remains huge even if the files been created no longer exist of the folder is empty.

Kindly help.

Regards
Shiv

[Basheer_2]

if this is a on a difft file sys, try defragmenting it

Reports
fsadm -DE /oracle

Defragment
fsadm -de /oracle

sort files by size and findout which ones are bigeaters

ls -ls | sort -k1n,1

[sivaraj_1]

The file system wat we have is vxfs.

Kindly help.

[Dennis Handly]

>The size of the directory remains huge even if the files been created no longer exist

This is how directories work, they never shrink in size.
If it is empty and you really want it to take the minimal size, you can rmdir and mkdir.

[Ganesan R]

Hi Sivaraj,

If you have deleted any files which are still used by some process, then that space will not be released until the process gets terminated. Use lsof if you have any open files on it.

Ex:

# lsof +aL1 |grep /var/tmp

[sivaraj_1]

Thanks for all your valuable inputs. :)

[Matti_Kurkela]

If you have OnlineJFS, you can run "fsadm -F vxfs -d " on the vxfs filesystem to reduce the sizes of these directories.

Please see "man fsadm_vxfs" for more information.

MK