Mailing List Archive: Massive wait- files?

Massive wait- files?

Jun 10, 2002, 3:30 AM

Post #1 of 3 (582 views)

Is this normal for a wait- file in our spool/db directory?

-rw-r----- 1 root other 3715697664 Jun 10 11:15
wait-outgoing_smtp.pag

the OS reports it as 3.7GB but only 2.5GB is actually used on the disk...
I've run exim_tidydb against this file and nothing has changed. I'm not sure
if it's really an issue or not? Should I just delete the hint files and let
exim rebuild them or ignore it?

Thanks,
Jon

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Re: Massive wait- files? [ In reply to ]

ph10 at cus

Jun 11, 2002, 1:04 AM

Post #2 of 3 (572 views)

Permalink

On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, EXIM Users wrote:

>
> Is this normal for a wait- file in our spool/db directory?
>
> -rw-r----- 1 root other 3715697664 Jun 10 11:15
> wait-outgoing_smtp.pag
>
> the OS reports it as 3.7GB but only 2.5GB is actually used on the disk...

That's because .pag files often contain "holes".

> I've run exim_tidydb against this file and nothing has changed. I'm not sure
> if it's really an issue or not? Should I just delete the hint files and let
> exim rebuild them or ignore it?

That does seem huge. Here, I rarely see a .pag file greater than 1MB.
Running exim_tidydb removes old entries, which makes their space
available for reuse, but it doesn't actually reduce the size of the
file.

I would try deleting it (and its corresponding .dir file) and keep an
eye on the size it grows to afterwards. Make sure you run exim_tidydb
regularly.

--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.

Re: Massive wait- files? [ In reply to ]

djc at microwave

Jun 11, 2002, 5:41 AM

Post #3 of 3 (580 views)

Permalink

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002, Philip Hazel wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, EXIM Users wrote:
>
> >
> > Is this normal for a wait- file in our spool/db directory?
> >
> > -rw-r----- 1 root other 3715697664 Jun 10 11:15
> > wait-outgoing_smtp.pag
> >
> > the OS reports it as 3.7GB but only 2.5GB is actually used on the disk...
>
> That's because .pag files often contain "holes".
>
> > I've run exim_tidydb against this file and nothing has changed. I'm not sure
> > if it's really an issue or not? Should I just delete the hint files and let
> > exim rebuild them or ignore it?

You did you tidydb as root, right? Since root owns this file, no other
user will be able to munge on it..

> That does seem huge. Here, I rarely see a .pag file greater than 1MB.
> Running exim_tidydb removes old entries, which makes their space
> available for reuse, but it doesn't actually reduce the size of the
> file.
>
> I would try deleting it (and its corresponding .dir file) and keep an
> eye on the size it grows to afterwards. Make sure you run exim_tidydb
> regularly.
>
> --
> Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
> ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
>
>
> --
>
> ## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ##
>
>

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