1 Jan
2022
1 Jan
'22
4:36 a.m.
It was bad luck if the process holding your file open was an unkillable
zombie. Reboot and clri fixes all things. Okay maybe "fix" isn't the word
I
want...
On Sat, 1 Jan 2022, 1:27 pm Erik E. Fair, <fair-tuhs(a)netbsd.org> wrote:
Classically, files don't get de-allocated (their
blocks re-added to the
filesystem free list) until the last open reference to their inode is
removed, even if the file name is removed from all directories.
This behavior is commonly used for temporary files: open(2) with O_CREAT
and unlink(2), and file disappears when the file descriptor is finally
closed or the process exits without explicitly closing the descriptor (the
kernel will close all descriptors associated with an exiting process).
Where process accounting is concerned, the kernel itself holds the inode
reference until it is explictly told to turn off process accounting. See
acct(2).
Erik Fair