Massive /tmp files

[Ron Garret]

On Jan 22, 2021, at 10:05 AM, @lbutlr <kremels at kreme.com> wrote:

> On 22 Jan 2021, at 09:07, Ron Garret (gmail) <ron.garret at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 22, 2021, at 8:02 AM, @lbutlr <kremels at kreme.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 21 Jan 2021, at 18:08, MRob <mrobti at insiberia.net> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>> I just found user who has single folder (standard maildir format) that filled with over 8mil files and 800GB in the /tmp subdirectory of that folder:
>>> 
>>> Are they real files or hard links?
>> 
>> How would you distinguish a hard link from a “real file”?
> 
> ls -l will show the number of hard links to a file in the first column after the permissions (or it showed the number off files (including . and ..) inside a directory if it's a directory entry).

Ah, I misinterpreted the question then.  You meant (I presume) “Are they 8 million distinct files, or 8 million hard links to a (much) smaller number of actual underlying inodes.”

So then my next question is (and I’m not intending to challenge you here, I’m just trying to get a better understanding of how dovecot works under the hood): where would these hard links come from?  What does dovecot use hard links for?

rg