/var filling up -- suspect OpenView

[Eric Herr]

I have two OV servers and on both /var becomes full after a while. I have /var/opt/OV as its own file system with plenty of space. Today I rebooted the server and when it came back /var was down to 16% from 100% pre-reboot. It it possible an OpenView process is filling this up? I don't see this behavior on my other HPUX servers.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If /var/opt/OV is a separate file system, why do you suspect OV? I would think it more likely that /var/tmp, /var/spool, or /var/mail is your suspect but that too is a guess. Why not gather real data? Do a series of du -k /var commands and look for growing directories and zero in on the problem.

[Redhat]

find for the larger file consumeing /var space.You can use du :-
ie, du -kx |sort -nr |head -20 ;which will help to identify the files comsumeing space are OV related or not.

[Redhat]

use :- du -kx /var |sort -nr |head

[Eric Herr]

I have used du and nothing out of the norm in /var/tmp, /var/mail, etc. I was thinking possibly OV had open files taking space in /var not being reported correctly by du. I think I can use lsof to determine if this is the case. I was also looking for an explanation why capacity drops to 16% from 100% after a reboot.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This is very common if a process has opened a temporary file. A standard UNIX idiom is to open() a file and then unlink() (rm it). This has the effect of removing the directory entry but the space is not returned to the filesystem free list until the process eithee close()'es the file or terminates.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This is very common if a process has opened a temporary file. A standard UNIX idiom is to open() a file and then unlink() (rm it). This has the effect of removing the directory entry but the space is not returned to the filesystem free list until the process either close()'es the file or terminates.

[Dennis Handly]

>Clay: UNIX idiom is to open() a file and then unlink() (rm it).

I believe lsof would help you find these.
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1123715
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1131830
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1057125

Search for others with: unlink lsof