I have a cron that generated a lot (15GB) of PHP warnings and was writing them in a log file.
I killed the process and as a temporary measure I stopped redirecting stderr to stdout so I don't fill up my storage.
After the change, I continued getting the same "high IO" warnings and the server storage was increasing temporarily and then going back to previous size.The original log file was empty.
I found one file using lsof -p <PID of cron> that was getting bigger by the second.
sh 25626 root 10u REG 202,1 21280244045 773 /tmp/tmpfZ14vFH (deleted)
This file is marked as deleted and I cannot find it in the /tmp directory.
Please provide some insight on this.
Is the OS writing the stderr in a tempprary file while the process is running?
Best Answer
You must cycle (start/stop) the process that has a hold of the file handle.
Check with
ps -ef |grep 25626as a beginning point to find the process that's holding it and if possible, cycle it. It will allow the file handle to release and the disk space will be cleared.I know you've already done this (found that
shis the process in question), but here is my go-to command in my notes (likely found on stack exchange in the past) for finding these mystery deleted files:lsof | grep deleted | numfmt --field=7 --to=iec | head