Re: Unix question

Lisa_Koivu_at_gelco.com wrote:  

> I am spending a lovely Sunday afternoon working on rearranging wasted space in
> our largest database. I deleted a large number of files ~30 min ago and the
> space does not show up as free in df. Does it take a while for this to happen?
> If it's not going to free up the exact amount of space I am deleting in database
> files this is a waste of my time !!!

In UNIX, the space is not de-allocated until all the processes with a file open either close it themselves, or are terminated. This means that you can be editing a file, someone else erases it, and you will never notice - and if you save it, the file will be recreated. (As opposed to NT, which simply won't let you delete an open file).

However, if you don't save it, the file will actually be truly deleted when you close your edit buffer. So, what has happened is, you have deleted open files, and the OS has decided that because they are open, it will remove the directory entries, but maintain the open file pointers, and the allocated space in the actual filesystem.

If you bounce your database and sync, you'll see the space magically reappear as the free list gets updated.

Cheers,

g

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