/tmp 97%, yet empty

[John Huck]

One of my HP-UX 11.11 systems is reporting that /tmp is 97% full. But when I checked to see what was filling /tmp (It is a 2GB filesystem), it was practically empty. There are only 5 files totaling less than 10MB in there. lost+found is empty as well.

I can't run a fsck because its mounted and I really don't want to reboot right now.

Any ideas whats causing /tmp to fill?

Thanks

[Pete Randall]

Usually this is caused when an open file is removed. In other words there is a process still running that has a file in /tmp open. The space will not be released until the process ends. You can try finding the file with fuser or lsof.


Pete

[Jaime Bolanos Rojas.]

John!

If you already check nothing else is in that mount point, then a rebood sound like a solution.

Regards,

Jaime.

[Peter Godron]

John,
fuser -cu /tmp will give you all the process-id accessing the disk.
Please be aware that files often only show their real size when the process generating them is completed and the file closed.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi John:

Undoubtedly you have a process that opened a file and immediately unlinked (removed) it. This is a common paridigm.

Until the process using the file terminates, space will not be returned to the system.

You could using 'fuser -c /tmp' to see what processes are using '/tmp'.

If you have 'glance' you can further interrogate the process's open files.

Regards!

...JRF...

[siva0123]

John,

Believe me i had the same problem last week with one of my filesystem.

And it was because of a open file only , i Used fuser -cu as suggested here to find that culprit and when i stopped that process everything reverted to normal.


Thanks,
Siva

[Jon M Zellhoefer · Accepted solution]

You can also use lsof and look for a process with a large offset for reserve.

[John Huck]

Thanks, I was able to find a process with a 2GB open file using lsof. Killed it, and all is good now.

Thanks for the help everyone.

[John Huck]

Thanks