[plug] .xsession-errors

[Russell Steicke]

On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 11:36:47AM +0800, Matt Kemner wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, quoth Russell Steicke:
> 
> > > Should I just rm it and touch a new one?
> >
> > That won't work, because programs in your X session will still have it
> > open for writing, so the space won't be freed even though the file
> > disappears from your home directory.  The only way to get rid of it is
> > to log out.
> 
> Handy tip: You can truncate files with the > operand
> 
> ie bash:~# > .xsession-errors
> 
> This will overwrite the file with a 0 length one, instantly saving you the
> space.

Excellent, thank you.  Just a warning for others that you have to be
aware that the next time something writes to it at the old file
position (ie an X program that inherits the file descriptor) it
becomes a sparse file (mostly filled with 0 bytes that aren't
allocated on the disk) with apparently the same size it had
previously.  So you need to use du to find out how much space is
really allocated.

  $ ls -lh .xsession-errors 
  -rw-------  1 russells russells 77K Dec  2 12:01 .xsession-errors
  $ du -h .xsession-errors 
  8.0K    .xsession-errors
  $ 

ext3, at least, supports sparse files.  I would guess that reiserfs
and xfs and others do as well, but haven't confirmed that.



-- 
Russell Steicke

-- Fortune says:
"I have a bone to pick, and a few to break."
        -- Anonymous