On 21.10.2006 00:05, Randall R Schulz wrote:
This indicates that at least one of the process(es) writing to that file has not opened it in O_APPEND mode (or switched to append mode after opening it). This is surprising, since it's a bit of a rookie programming mistake. Sadly, it only takes one such erroneously written program to mess things up in this way, since the programs that do properly write with O_APPEND will, as the name suggest, always have their contributions to the file placed at the very end, wherever that happens to be at the moment their write request is received by the kernel. Furthermore, the kernel guarantees that O_APPEND-mode writes will not interfere with each other. In contrast, programs that seek to the end and then start writing may well overwrite the data of concurrent writers.
Nice:) Just clicked 'send' and KMail fetched your answer too:) Anyway... so I was right... it is a broken open call. @Julian - you shouldn't bother with the reported file size, when you flush it with cat /dev/null > .xsession-errors since the holes of the files are not actually written to disk (at least not the holes bigger than one block). You won't waste any space. -- Blade hails you... I am the dark side of you --Nightwish