Your NFS client most likely has an entry in the crontab to delete all files in the /tmp directory (or all files older than a certain amount of time); this script is probably not smart enough to tell files on local storage from remote storage.
Two things jumped out at me immediately:
1) You're mounting the filer on /tmp. 2) The deletions occur at 5:00am Saturday, which is prime cron time.
Note also the ascending time of the directories -- as the file-removing script swept through the directories, it updated their modification times.
The moral: NEVER, EVER, EVER NFS mount anything on or in /tmp. :)
-- Eric Barrett / Technical Support Engineer, Network Appliance Direct: 1-408-822-4779 / Pager: 1-408-939-7945 Get answers NOW! - NetApp On the Web - http://now.netapp.com
-----Original Message----- From: Dave Toal [mailto:dave_toal@t-t.com] Sent: Monday, December 20, 1999 4:11 PM To: jq@opensystems.com; toasters@mathworks.com; unixgroup@t-t.com; support@opensystems.com Subject: Files disappear after some random interval
Folks,
We have a problem with files disappearing from a filer.The box is a 520 running 5.2.1. THREE times now, we've mounted one of its volumes to a production box, done tar cvf - | ( cd mount_point; tar xvf -), diff -r with no errors -- and then a day or two later the files that were copied are gone. Directories are there still, and symbolic links, but NO FILES.
Snapshots were turned off after the second time ithappened; snap reserve is set to 0% and snap sched is 0 0 0 for that volume. There are no remarks in messages -- nothing besides [statd] time, up x days. The directories show size but ls returns nothing.
This is the volume on the netapp, mounted on the sun box:idsmajor:root:/mnt/etc>mount -p | grep /tmp/a sanihome:/vol/nfs_archive - /tmp/a nfs - no rw idsmajor:root:/mnt/etc>ls -l /tmp/a | head total 81288 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 344064 Dec 19 05:29 apr_1995 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 393216 Dec 19 05:31 apr_1996 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 3989504 Dec 19 05:51 apr_1997 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 114688 Dec 19 05:52 aug_1994 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 380928 Dec 19 05:53 aug_1995 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 409600 Dec 19 05:55 aug_1996 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 4227072 Dec 19 06:16 aug_1997 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 282624 Dec 19 06:18 dec_1994 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 290816 Dec 19 06:19 dec_1995 idsmajor:root:/mnt/etc>ls -als /tmp/a/* | head -20 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 ids users 29 Dec 7 16:34 /tmp/a/dec_1997 -> /archive/nfs_archive/dec_1997 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 ids users 29 Dec 7 23:37 /tmp/a/nov_1997 -> /archive/nfs_archive/nov_1997 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 ids users 29 Dec 8 01:05 /tmp/a/oct_1997 -> /archive/nfs_archive/oct_1997 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 ids users 29 Dec 8 01:54 /tmp/a/sep_1997 -> /archive/nfs_archive/sep_1997
/tmp/a/apr_1995: total 688 680 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 344064 Dec 19 05:29 . 8 drwxr-xr-x 44 ids users 4096 Dec 20 13:33 ..
/tmp/a/apr_1996: total 784 776 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 393216 Dec 19 05:31 . 8 drwxr-xr-x 44 ids users 4096 Dec 20 13:33 ..
/tmp/a/apr_1997: total 7808 7800 drwxr-xr-x 2 ids users 3989504 Dec 19 05:51 . 8 drwxr-xr-x 44 ids users 4096 Dec 20 13:33 ..
idsmajor:root:/mnt/etc>
There were no problems with applications pulling filesfrom these directories on the netapp on Friday, Dec 18. This volume is not mounted anywhere else. This is a production system -- nothing writes to the mount point.
What happened Saturday morning at 5 AM? Why did allthese directories get touched?
Dave