rm -rf 4GB_DIR kills server

walidaly · 11-04-2007, 06:29 AM

my cache folder becomes 4GB over night and I need to clean it, I do

Code:

mv cachedir cachedir.old

then try to remove it

Code:

rm -rf cachedir.old

I get the load to jump and server stop responding till it cleans the files
also tried

Code:

find cache.old -type f | xargs -r rm

same result
the rm -d doesn't work on CENTOS 4 (RHEL5)
files are compressed .gz

heson · 11-04-2007, 10:19 AM

I would try:

Code:

nice find cachedir.old -type f -exec ionice -c3 rm -f {} \;

maybe with some extra ionice and nice to make it even slower.

walidaly · 11-06-2007, 05:12 AM

nice didn't do much for me, I dont have ionice either...my kernel is 2.6.9 maybe that's the issue?
I even tried using sleep like

Code:

for i in $(ls); do sleep 0.1s;rm -vf ${i}; done

I tried a workaround which calm rm down a little

Code:

renice -20 -u www
renice 20 -u root

not sure if it's the write solution though but all important services run under other users

walidaly · 11-06-2007, 05:15 AM

the load still high, not as b4 but I want it to stay under 1%
here stats using top

Code:

PID   USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
19121 root      34  19  4460  440  372 D    1  0.0   0:05.08 rm
18899 www        0 -20 68012  15m  13m S    1  0.4   0:02.59 php-cgi
18907 www        0 -20 67864  17m  15m S    1  0.4   0:05.47 php-cgi
18493 www        0 -20 67300 5076 3228 S    1  0.1   0:00.03 php-cgi
18515 www        0 -20 67640 4976 3352 S    1  0.1   0:00.03 php-cgi