"Fabio" == Fabio Pietrosanti fabio@telemail.it writes:
Fabio> hi all, Fabio> i notice that on my NetApp F740 there are a lot Fabio> of file named .nfs***, for example .nfs0048c2f20000043a . Fabio> most are empty, but there are someone very big, and in some Fabio> particular case, i can't delete it, without moving the file Fabio> subdirectory by subdirectory since i arrive on the unix phisical disk.
Fabio> What about these files ? :)
.nfs files are created by a clienthost when one process on the clienthost deletes a file while another process on the clienthost is still holding the file open. This allows the delete to appear to succeed for one process w/o causing the the process to begin getting stale nfs file handles. It is a hack, but it is the only way to simulate UFS semantics on NFS. The clienthost will normally delete the .nfs file once the remaining process holding the file open closes it. However, if the clienthost crashes, you get left with a .nfs file on the filer.
Note that if more than one host is involved (e.g, process on host a is holding a file open over NFS, while process on host b deletes that over NFS), process a will get a stale file handle.
j.