[darcs-devel] nfs mmap issues (possible fix/workaround)

[David Brown]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 12:16:12 -0500, David Roundy <droundy at abridgegame.org>  
wrote:

> The problems were that at least on linux, you run into trouble if you  
> open a file, delete that file, and then try to delete the directory  
> containing that file (all before closing the file).  This was causing a  
> few darcs commands (most reproducibly darcs check, but also other  
> commands from time to time) to fail.  The problem is that nfs seems to  
> leave a .nfsXXXXXXX file behind when you delete a file that is open.

I believe this is fairly common behavior for NFS, in fact, I believe it is  
required to get the right semantics.  Posix-type behavior requires that a  
file remain around, if the last link is removed, and there are still open  
handles.  Since NFS is supposed to survive a server reboot (which would  
free up these files), the file must remain present somewhere as long as it  
is still opened by a client.

Dave