On 25-Apr-07, at 8:41 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Apr 25, 2007, at 05:05 UTC, Norman Palardy wrote: > >> Be very aware that you CAN rm a file even when you are writing to it >> and then it's damned hard to do anything as the file may just grow >> and grow but you cannot access it any longer. > > I'm not sure what you mean by that. As long as you're accessing it > (have the file open), it remains on disk (even though it's been > removed > from the directory it was in). When the last file handle to it is > closed (which is guaranteed to happen when your app quits or aborts -- > this all happens at the OS level), the file is actually marked deleted > and its space becomes available for reuse. OSes are quite good at > making sure that no "zombie" files (taking up space yet not accessible > by anything) are possible.
What I mean is that the ONLY thing that can access it is the OS. It may no longer exist in any directory that you or I can access in any way. If you have a server that perpetually writes to this file you can have a real problem (like a log file). It won't show in any file or directory listing and yet it can still be on disk taking up space and a reboot may be the only way to really get rid of it. It's not specifically an RB issue just a FYI that Unix will let you do this. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
