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Date:      Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:51:31 -0800
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu>
Cc:        stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: grops eats disk 
Message-ID:  <199802242351.PAA17125@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 24 Feb 1998 18:41:18 EST." <Pine.BSF.3.96.980224183001.5759O-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> 

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> Okay, I'm puzzled.  I run groff, then get an error
> 
>   /: write failed, file system is full
> 
> Hmm... must be filling up /tmp.  I've got about 5 megabytes free
> on / and I can't imagine why groff would need all that but
> anyway...I suspend groff and sure enough, df shows that that / is
> indeed full, but there is nothing unusual in /tmp.  In fact I
> can't find *anything* on the root partition eating up space, yet
> the space disappears. 

This is the traditional "invisible temporary file" trick, I suspect.  

The file has been deleted, but because it's still open, it still 
exists.  If you kill groff, the space will be freed again.  Groff just 
nukes the file to minimise the chances of temporary file collision, and 
to ensure that even if it crashes horribly you're not left with 
temporary files lying around.
-- 
\\  Sometimes you're ahead,       \\  Mike Smith
\\  sometimes you're behind.      \\  mike@smith.net.au
\\  The race is long, and in the  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\  end it's only with yourself.  \\  msmith@cdrom.com



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