[Dovecot] what are those .nfsXXXXX files with mbox ?

[Jeff Ballard]

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:37:40 -0600  tblader wrote:

> Bertrand Leboeuf wrote:
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > there just seems to be a lot of them
> > 
> >> From: tblader <tblader at flambeau.com>
> >>
> >> Those are files NFS creates when the file it had locked/open/writing to wa
s
> >> nuked or moved before it had a chance to complete.  IIRC, they cannot be
> >> removed until the NFS daemon has given up on them [1].
> >>
> >> [1] - from experience, not TFM

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:37:40 -0600  tblader wrote:

> You're welcome.  You may want to look into the exact cause of the problem how
ever.
> The existence of those nfs dot files may suggest some file locking may need
> to be done.
> 

There should be a cron job on the server that deletes those

>From /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root:

15 3 * * 0 /usr/lib/fs/nfs/nfsfind

Looking at /usr/lib/fs/nfs/nfsfind:
# less /usr/lib/fs/nfs/nfsfind
#!/bin/sh
# Copyright (c) 1993 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

#ident  "@(#)nfsfind.sh 1.7     00/07/17 SMI"
#
# Check shared NFS filesystems for .nfs* files that
# are more than a week old.
#
# These files are created by NFS clients when an open file
# is removed. To preserve some semblance of Unix semantics
# the client renames the file to a unique name so that the
# file appears to have been removed from the directory, but
# is still usable by the process that has the file open.
[snip]

-Jeff

-- 
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Jeff Ballard <ballard at engr.wisc.edu>   608-265-5090
Unix Systems Manager, Computer-Aided Engineering Center