Thanks for all the replies. The file space freed itself up overnight. Those off-shift disk fairies are the bestest! -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mladen Gogala Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 11:57 PM To: Robert_Fenstermacher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Oracle-L Freelists Subject: Re: Unix Command On 04/20/2006 11:44:47 PM, Fenstermacher, Robert wrote: > This is both an oracle and O/S 'issue'. > > In unix, when you delete a file, the filename is removed from the directory, but the space is only freed up when all other processes that had that file open have closed the file. > > So, until the file's 'use count' goes to zero, the O/S cannot physically remove the file and the space that it occupies. > My understanding was that he tested with fuser or lsof and found no other users using that file? If that is so, then OS may be little slow in recognizing that the situation has changed. -- Mladen Gogala http://www.mgogala.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l