Ben Scott <dragonh...@gmail.com> writes: > > On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Ken D'Ambrosio <k...@jots.org> wrote: > > If process A is reading from a file, and process B deletes it, process > > A can continue to read from it until... well, until it stops reading > > from it. [...] > > Can that space that the file takes up be overwritten during > > this interim? Or does the OS hold the inode sacrosanct until both > > references AND processes are no longer making use of it? > > The later. The inode remains allocated until no longer referenced > by any directory or process. > > This can lead to situations where the free space in a filesystem is > less than one would expect by walking the filesystem to total space > allocated to named files, and subtracting that from the total space in > the filesystem.
This is also why the correct response to "Dude, your .xsession-errors file is 23 GB--can you do something about that?" is not "OK, I've rm'd the file." -- "Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))." _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
