ZFS trouble: unbelievably large files created
David Samms
dsamms at nw-ds.com
Fri Oct 15 22:44:27 UTC 2010
On 10/15/10 15:09, Oliver Fromme wrote:
> > ls -kls shawxp/var/amavis/.spamBAD
> > total 13352131
> > 771 -rw------- 1 110 110 684032 Oct 15 12:02
> > auto-whitelist
> > 1 -rw------- 1 110 110 40 Oct 15 12:37 bayes.lock
> > 1284 -rw------- 1 110 110 1294336 Oct 15 12:38 bayes_seen
> > 4229 -rw------- 1 110 110 4227072 Oct 15 12:38 bayes_toks
> > 5025103 -rw------- 1 110 110 553184002048 Oct 15 12:38
> > bayes_toks.expire3515
> > 8320745 -rw------- 1 110 110 140743122878464 Oct 15 12:14
> > bayes_toks.expire97254
>
> Ok, so those files are so-called "sparse" files, i.e. they
> contain holes that don't actually occupy disk space.
>
> The numbers in the first column indicate the amount of
> physical disk space allocated (in KB). That's about 5 GB
> for the first file and 8 GB for the second (this is also
> consistent with the "total" value in the first line of the
> ls output, i.e. about 13 GB).
>
> That's still quite big, but certainly not in the TB range.
> I do not know why amavis creates such large sparse files,
> though.
Under UFS I don't observe amavis creating the sparse files. The problem
is fairly repeatable, not on demand, but occurs several times a day.
High disk activity is a sure sign amavis is creating large files. Task
shuts down normaly and cpu load is low.
This is a production server but I have moved all critical customer jails
back to UFS so can do testing if anyone has any ideas of what to look for.
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