[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Hi, > > > I renamed (with 'mv') the file I was sending Tor logs to whilst Tor was > > running. > > I actually moved it to a different directory. > > The log data kept being written to that file. How? > > unixoid OSes use file pointers which remain even when you do rm or unlink. > So mv does not change writing to an open file.
There's some more discussion of this kind of thing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/inode#Implications Notably, on Unix-like systems including Linux and Mac OS X, a file can have multiple names or no names at all and still be the "same file", because the notion of the identity of a file is so thoroughly separated from the notion of a filename. -- Seth Schoen Staff Technologist [EMAIL PROTECTED] Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org/ 454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 1 415 436 9333 x107