[Zope] memory problems (actually disk problems ;-)

[Chris Withers]

Serge Renfer wrote:

> I run two instances of zope on a Sun sparc with Solaris 9.
> Data.fs of one instance is 2Gb big
> 
> The actual problem is the lack of space on its partition => there is 
> about 2 Gb of disk space left.

Right, so this instance of Zope has a Data.fs approaching 2GB in size 
and there is about 2GB of disk space free? So you're talking about a 4GB 
partition?

Where is the other Zope instance?

> Yesterday I made a copy on another server (as a backup) and restarted 
> zope => it wouldn't start!

Well, okay, but you need ot give us information: What exception type, 
exception value and traceback were shown?

> So I removed all the extra files around Data.fs (that is all Data.fs.*), 
> and retried to strart zope => then it finally started BUT:

Hmmm, okay, that'll certainly slow down your startup a lot...

> 1) the 2Gb that had gone during these 24 days came back
> 
>     => does Zope keep a temp file with a copy of Data.fs ?

Are you packing the ZODB?

> 2) the users sent me mail telling that they lost what they did for the 4 
> last days !!!

That sounds odd, did the Data.fs file become truncated in any way?

>     => I thought Zope would gather all its temp (buffer) data into the 
> Data.fs when it is asked to restart, does it do that or not ?

Generally, at the end of each transaction, all data ends up in Data.fs. 
Each transaction generally exists for the length of time it takes to 
answer one web request. So, unless on an extremely high volume site, 
restart, graceful or not, is unlikely to loose much data.


> What could I do to get back to the situation I was in before the restart 
> (in terms of data => for my users) ?

Well, try any backed up Data.fs files you have...

> /prd/data/Zope/var/zope8080/var
> Network Services

Urm, I do hope this isn't trying to say you have your Data.fs on a 
network-mounted drive?!

cheers,

Chris

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