Creation of files .nfs

[Sergiy Dudkovskyy_1]

Hi all,
At work with files on NFS the catalogue, created files .nfs1234, where 1234 is PID process. These files, exact copy of the open files. After closing original files, .nfs do not remove.

In what a problem?
Sergiy.

[RAC_1]

These are indeed NFS files. If you unmounted nfs mount cleanly, they should go away on their own. But if they are not, you can safely delete them.

[Dave Olker]

Hi Sergiy,

A ".nfs" file is created when more than one process has the same file open on an NFS client and one of the processes attempts to remove the file.

The NFS client kernel is smart enough to recognize that another process is still using the file, so rather than delete it the client renames the file to .nfsXXXXX so that any new processes looking for the original file won't find it but any existing processes that are still using the file will not be affected by the file's removal.

The NFS client is supposed to remove this .nfsXXXX file once the last process using the file on the client stops referencing the file. There are occasions when this doesn't happen for legitimate reasons (client is rebooted before it is able to send the REMOVE request) and non-legitimate reasons (bug in the client code where the last reference to the file doesn't decrement all the appropriate counters and the REMOVE is never sent).

In any case, the appearance of a .nfsXXXX file is not really a concern unless you start seeing a lot of them and they never disappear on their own. If that is the case you should first ensure that you're running the latest ONC and VM patches (NFS and buffer cache).

Hope this helps,

Dave