BDF shows 100% - but no files on file system

[Josee Bourget-Thuma]

Hi!

Our system has several file systems that are near full. In attempt to relieve that, the DBA cleaned out some tablespaces and delete most all files using sudo user.

One would expect to see space available to grow but that is not the case. File system still shows 100% full.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Josee...

[melvyn burnard]

This is usually caused by files being removed while they are still opened.
You can either attempt to stop any processes and unmount the fs, then remount it, or use something like lsof to try to find processes that have filesopen on the fs and then stop these processes.

[Christopher McCray_1]

Let me make sure I understand... there are 0 files, but you are 100% full? What is the output of your lvdisplay? What does the Kb free column on the file system say? Let me know.

Hope this helps.

Chris

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Josee,

This is due to the file that are opened by the procesess. Best thing is to unmount and mount it again. If you can't unmount, you need to kill the processes that are active on teh file system. Use fuser -u /dev/vgxx/lvolx to see the processes that are holding this logical volume up.

Once it is unmounted and mounted, you will see it back 0%.

-Sri

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Josee:

This is not an unusual situation in UNIX. A process can open a file, then unlink (rm) it;
and until that process closes it, the process can read, write, seek, etc. - there is no directory entry but the space is not returned to the filesystem until the file handle is closed.

You can use fuser or a freeware utility lsof which is available from any of the HP-UX porting centers to find these processes.

Clay

[Roger Baptiste]

Josee,

As others pointed out in this thread,
the culprit could be a "running process"
which is writing to a file whose "file handle"
is open. That is why, even though you
don't see any files in the FS, it is writing
to the "file handle" which is consuming space.

You can do a fuser -cu
and get the processes currently using
the filesystem. Then, make sure you can
kill those processes without affecting
anything else on the system. If it is
a oracle-related process, check with the DBA.

Another good tool to use would be "lsof" .
It lists all open files on the system or
processes running on a system which have
open files.

-raj

[Pierce Byrne_1 · Accepted solution]

The statements about processes running on files which are removed are correct. More worrying though is that the database files were removed whilst the database was up.
The database will continue to run, but you will have problems closing it, if ORACLE you will will to "shutdown abort" and remember to check if it autostart on system bootup via /etc/inittab.

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
You seem to have open files on that file system. If the database is still up, the files will not be closed.
DBA should use shutdown abort command.
If you get the tool 'lsof', it might help you along.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[harry d brown jr]

If you don't already have "lsof", then download it from here: http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.55/

or here:

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.55/

Then run it like this:

lsof | grep filesystemnamehere

It'll give you the processes that have a file open on the filesystemnamehere

[Jayaprakash_1]

use the command fuser -u filesystem.This will give the process id kill the process this will free ur space.

Jayaprakash

[Tim D Fulford]

fuser -cu /

One or all of these may be hogging the i-nodes. At you convienience shutdown the applications attached to the above PID's. That should clear it.

Tim