Regarding growing disk space

[Minoru Asano]

Hello,

At the customer site, /var area has grown.

[ENVIRONMENT]
Tru64 UNIX V5.1B

[SITUATION]
Now the growing /var area phenomenon has stopped now because
he killed a specified application process with -9 option.
He could not find any growing file at /var directory.
But df command has indicated that /var area grow.

[ADDITIONAL INFORMATION]
- He could not confirm the process status, and whether the process name
become defunct or not.
- The CPU usage of this process was over 90%.
- I have ever heard this phenomenon when SAP process is running.
After killing SAP process, the disk space has reduced.

[QUESTION]
- Have you ever heard this phenomenon ?
- Could you tell me the mechanism for this trouble ?
For example, df command calculate virtual memory size, so on.

Thank you for support and advice.
Best Regards.
/Minoru.Asano

[Steven Schweda]

"rm /var/file" will appear to remove "file",
but if a program has "file" open, it will
still be there, and it can still grow.
Killing the process which is using the file
will let the OS close the file and free the
space. ("kill -9" may be more harsh than
needed (overkill?).)

This can happen on very many (all?) operating
systems.

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

It might be useful to see the exact output of the df command...

You'll sometimes see /var being a fileset in a domain shared with /usr.

ie
usr_domain#usr /usr
usr_domain#var /var

In that situation, something filling up /usr would also reduce the amount available in /var.

From what you've said, it doesn't sound like this is the case, however it's something to bear in mind.

Cheers,

Rob