Very Computer

I have process that works for days and produces log file.
Every midnight the log file is closed for the current day and new one
for the new day creates. I delete the old logs.
This procedure works on about 10 log files that grow to 10-300MB.
The problem appears is after big log files that been created and
deleted, the df still see them holding the avaiable space and the du
-ks doesnt see them.
I got to situation that the difference between the df and du was over
800MB
I know how df and du work, but my problem is I cant close this process
and free the space.

Is there a possibility to remove these deleted files (removed files
that have an inode of 0) while df sees and du skips without killing
the process?

Currently, I kill the process every time the filesystem become almost
full to prevent any system problems.

I will be happy for better solution,
Thanks,
Avi

Don't try to 'remove' it while it is open.  You've already seen that it
doesn't work.  If you don't need the data, truncate it.  
cp /dev/null /file  or
cat /dev/null > /file

Both should reduce the number of blocks allocated to the file to zero.
If the process is still writing, it will start to fill up again, but
what else would you expect?

Quote:> Currently, I kill the process every time the filesystem become almost
> full to prevent any system problems.

That's the best way to do it.

--

Unix System Administrator                    Taos - The SysAdmin Company
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
         < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

Quote:>Don't try to 'remove' it while it is open.  You've already seen that it
>doesn't work.  If you don't need the data, truncate it.  
>cp /dev/null /file  or
>cat /dev/null > /file

Or just:

Quote:> /file
>Both should reduce the number of blocks allocated to the file to zero.
>If the process is still writing, it will start to fill up again, but
>what else would you expect?

Another problem is that it will keep writing at the same location in the
file, so it will have a huge gap of null bytes at the beginning, unless it
opened the file in O_APPEND mode.

Quote:>> Currently, I kill the process every time the filesystem become almost
>> full to prevent any system problems.

>That's the best way to do it.

It will also solve the file location problem I mentioned.

Another solution is to use syslog rather than writing directly to the
file.  After removing the file, send SIGHUP to syslogd and it will close
and re-open the log file.

--

Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.