4.3 GB System Disk is getting full; OpenVMS 7.1-2

[Joffre B]

Hello Everybody,
I have an Alpha Server 1200 with OpenVMS 7.1-2.
The system disk is almost full, I erase logs every day, but I do not understand why the disk is getting full, because we do not change the DATA.
I heard that It is a problem with the SO and there is a patch to resolve this, do you know something about it ?

Thanks, Regards

[Volker Halle]

Joffre,

welcome to the OpenVMS ITRC forum.

A 4.3 GB disk is much bigger than an average OpenVMS system disk really needs to be (assuming no large page, swap or dumpfiles needed). If there is just OpenVMS and some layered products installed on that disk, the diskspace used should not grow significantly every day.

To diagnose and solve this problem, you would first need to find out, which file or which set of files are growing in size every day.

Here are some commands to try to find out:

Files written to since yesterday:
$ DIR/MOD/SIN=YESTERDAY SYS$SYSDEVICE:<*...>

Files with a size larger than 10000 blocks:
$ DIR/SIZ=ALLOC/SEL=SIZ=MIN=10000 SYS$SYSDEVICE:<*...>

You can probably ignore 'big' files, which are not being written/modified daily.

$ SHOW DEV/FILES SYS$SYSDEVICE: also shows all open files on the system disk. Ignore all files with a PID of 00000000, these are just installed images.

Volker.

[Steven Schweda]

Full of what? You need to find the files
which are growing (or multiplying).

I wouldn't expect a patch to solve this
problem, as you don't really seem to know
what the problem is yet.

The DFU can help to find large files.

[Arch_Muthiah]

Joffre,

To detect the file(s) that are rapidly consuming disk space, do this trial...

$SHOW DEVICES/FILES disk_name

This lists all the files in open state.

redirect the output to a file, modify each line in the file to make it as command file to see how all the file's size keeps growing...so your new command file will be many lines like this for each opened files
$dir /size=alloc opened_filename_1
$dir /size=alloc opened_filename_2
....
$dir /size=alloc opened_filename_n

Run this command file and find any opened files with an allocation size much bigger than the actual size and growing very fast are the files which eats your system disk space. and find the owner process for that files and stop it.

Archunan

[Arch_Muthiah]

Joffre,

You need READALL privilege to get the size of all files, so do
$ set proce/priv=readall,
then give this cmnd
$SHOW DEVICES/FILES disk_name.

also check the sizes of the following files
OPERATOR.LOG
SYS$ERRORLOG:ERRLOG.SYS
SYS$MANAGER:ACCOUNTNG.DAT
SYS$MANAGER:SECURITY.AUDIT$JOURNAL
SYS$SYSTEM:SYS$QUEUE_MANAGER.QMAN$JOURNAL

if possible, can you tell what kind of applications are running on yourn system?

Archunan

[comarow]

A few other thoughts.

Make sure you don't have image level accounting on. This will fill up a ton of space.

$show accounting

Strangely, when you start accounting, that is the default.

It is very possible the the use of disk space is actually a symptom of another problem. Check the actual logs. Could be a network problem is creating failed artificial logins for example.

Make sure you get rid of the audit server log, and look at it. That's a place that might have a problem.

Network logs could be a problem. Look at them.

Look for .lis files that might be created for some kind of print job, or other application temp files.

$analy/disk/repair to make sure deleted files are actually deleted.

The previous suggestion to look at modified files is excellent, as is looking at large file.

You mention problems with SO, but I don't know what you mean. Could you please elaborate?

Thanks.

Bob

[labadie_1]

You have logicals names for moving many system files off the system disk: accountng for accounting, opc$logfile_name for operator.log...

and use dfu (on the cd freeware) to find quickly any file with size min or max

$ mc dfu sea 'disk'/size=(min=10000,max=800000)

[Petr Spisek]

Joffre,
check also size of your pagefie swapfile and dumpfile on your system disk (DIR/SIZE SYS$SYSTEM:*.SYS,*.DMP). You can create secondary swapfile and pagefile to an other disk (and recreate smaller these primary files). Dumpfile is posible move to secondary disk too (need to change DUMPSTYLE system parameter and console paramterer DUMP_DEV).

Next 2 tips:
- check and purge logs on your system disk
- check size of OPERATOR.LOG;* , ACCOUNTNG.DAT and SECURITY.AUDIT$JOURNAL in SYS$MANAGER:

Petr

[Peter Zeiszler]

show mem/files
**This shows the swapfiles and pagefiles.

dir/size=all OPC$LOGFILE_NAME
dir/size=all sys$manager:OPERATOR.LOG
**This is the logical for the OPCOM log file. Normally this isn't going to be huge but it will depend on what you are setup to audit.

dir sys$sysroot:[sysexe]*.dmp/size=all
**This is the normal directory for dumpfile. I try to move my dump file off the system disk.

There are alot of good suggestions in the thread. Follow them to find the files.

Another possible way of finding the file is to monitor the process with the highest top DIO and then find what files that process might have open.