[ale] the no-such-file file

[Fletch]

>>>>> "Ben" == Ben Phillips <pynk at angband.org> writes:

    Ben> JOOC: How come every time I do a 'find' of any kind from the
    Ben> root level of a filesystem I get a message like this in
    Ben> addition to the normal output:

    Ben> find: /proc/7713/fd/4: No such file or directory

    Ben> I'm sure this is just some funky /proc thing, but it's got me
    Ben> curious.  How can a file exist enough for 'find' to find it,
    Ben> and yet not exist?

        /proc/[pid]/fd provides an interface to the file descriptors
that process [pid] has open (so that you can do an open on
/proc/[pid]/fd/2 and it'll have the same effect as doing dup( 2 )).
It's entirely conceivable that whatever process 7713 was in this case
had an open descriptor 4 at the time find did the readdir and had
closed said descriptor before find got around to doing a stat() on
that particular file.  If you have some process that's open()ing (or
pipe()ing, or socket()ing, or . . .) and close()ing descriptors often
(perhaps an httpd?) it's not inconceivable that you're catching one of 
these transient descriptors.


        Not a definative explanation, but a possible one at least. :)

-- 
Fletch                | "If you find my answers frightening,       __`'/|
fletch at phydeaux.org   |  Vincent, you should cease askin'          \ o.O'
678 443-6239(w)       |  scary questions." -- Jules                =(___)=
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