SUMMARY: How to find what process eats the file space.

From: Jean-Francois Vibert <vibert_at_b3e.jussieu.fr>
Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 18:38:43 +0200

Iwant to warmly thank all the people who answer (very rapidly, after 15
mn, amazingly efficient!!):

 
Richard Eisenman <eisenman_at_tricity.wsu.edu>
Phil Farrell <farrell_at_pangea.Stanford.EDU>
Robert L. McMillin <rlm_at_syseca-us.com>
Lucio Chiappetti <lucio_at_ifctr.mi.cnr.it>
<osf_at_python.corning.com>

I tried all the 3 solutions prposed (see below):

lsof, nfswatch and the couple pfconfig/tcpdump

I was unable to find anything.

Finally, part of the pb was the .Xdefault-error file (see below) of one
user that had grew up to 1.5 Gb. But after have been deleted, it did not
grow again, and the pb contiunued.

We rebooted the file server were the advfs filesystem /u was at 0% free,
and after rebooting... All was fine: the free space was at 4 Gb, without
to have to remove any file.

This stays a mistery. Probably a bugin the file server system?

Below are the 5 answers of the above mentionned peoples

Thank you again
-----------------
You might try building lsof, which will give you a list of processes and
the
files they control. The source can be obtained from just about any
linux site.
 I use it myself for similar problems.

------------------
Use /usr/sbin/nfswatch to monitor the nfs traffic to your server.
You can see traffic levels by client computer, or even by
"authenticator" (another name for user). You should be able to isolate
the problem to a single user on a single client machine. Then
see what he is running on that client, or just reboot that one client.

-------------------
You ought to be able to find out who the culprit is pretty quickly by
using tcpdump. As root:

        pfconfig tu0 +c +p #(or whatever your ethernet device id is
                           # instead of tu0
        tcpdump -itu0

This will get you *all* the packets, including NFS traffic. You ought
to be able to see pretty quickly the source of the traffic.

-------------------
  Don't know about processes, but you can find which user or machine
  is responsible of the highest NFS traffic using nfswatch (it IS
bundled
  with DU, and has a man page)

----------------------

lsof (list open files)
it's freeware
ex: lsof | grep /u

---------------------
-- 
Dr Jean-Francois Vibert; B3E ESI INSERM U444
Faculte de Medecine Saint-Antoine, 27 rue Chaligny. 75571 PARIS Cedex 12
Tel: (33)-1-44.73.84.31; Fax: (33)-1-44.73.84.54
e-mail Internet: vibert_at_b3e.jussieu.fr        http://www.b3e.jussieu.fr
Received on Wed May 14 1997 - 19:07:39 NZST

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