Strange Unix file system object (Re: Missing space in root)

[Paul O'Neill]

>From article <668 at mccc.UUCP>, by pjh at mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg):
>>
>> I run a pair of 3B2/400 (SV R3.1) computers and just noticed a strange
>> ...

I sometimes get behind in my mail.  :-)
Right now there's 1.6 Mb in my /usr/spool/mail file.
I read the stuff w/ mailtool on a SunOS 4.0 machine.

I noticed that compiles were failing w/ write error: / file system is full
and traced it down to this:

When the mailtool is fired up, df shows 1.6 Mb less space in /.  OK, I
thought there's some temporary file in /tmp holding all this garbage.
But ls couldn't find anything in /tmp, and du couldn't find anything in 
/tmp, as a matter of fact du of all directories in the root partition
doesn't turn up anything 1.6 Mb in size.  Hmmmm.

``ofiles'' (thank god for ofiles) shows Mail has an open inode, 1788, 
on the root file system.  But "find / -inum 1788 -xdev -print" shows
nothing.

So, what is this bizarre object?  Ofiles and df know about it.
du, ls, and find don't know about it.

Thanx,


Paul O'Neill                 pvo at oce.orst.edu
Coastal Imaging Lab
OSU--Oceanography
Corvallis, OR  97331         503-754-3251