Files/directories created in /var/tmp/vi.recover in absurd quantities - will exhaust inodes rapidly

[Ed Hynan]

Binary package hint: nvi

% lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04
% apt-cache policy nvi
nvi:
  Installed: 1.81.6-5
  Candidate: 1.81.6-5
  Version table:
 *** 1.81.6-5 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

At times nvi will create large numbers of entries in /var/tmp/vi.recover -
other times it does not. I have not found a way to trigger this.

I just discovered this by running out of inodes (9.04 installed on new
notebook two weeks ago). So many that rm -rf ./* failed with argument
list too long; I had to invoke rm on subsets several times.

Just after clearing /var/tmp/vi.recover I did a simple two line edit on a
Makefile, then quit vi. That resulted in over 2000 entries in /var/tmp/vi.recover
but as I write this bug report nvi is not repeating the bug.

Checking the filesystem of an 8.10 system I find 1187 entries accumulated
over about 10 months of use, so the bug wasn't active there.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: nvi 1.81.6-5
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: nvi
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-15-generic x86_64

[lichray (lichray)]

I have to say, this problem is too astonishing and too hard to reproduce, to any other users... I can't help unless I can sit before your computer...

[Ed Hynan (ehynan)]

On 12/01/2011 09:14 PM, lichray wrote:
> I have to say, this problem is too astonishing and too hard to
> reproduce, to any other users... I can't help unless I can sit before
> your computer...
>

Ha! That's an old bug report!

I no longer have a 9.04 installation, but:

10.04 LTS:
 % ls -l /var/tmp/vi.recover | wc -l; 40

10.10:
 % ls -l /var/tmp/vi.recover | wc -l; 1332

OpenBSD 4.9 (where nvi is native):
 % ls -l /var/tmp/vi.recover | wc -l; 0

(My only Debian 6.X machine recently died, and I never thought to
check there. I was using nvi on it, as always.)

It hasn't exhausted inodes again on any version since 9.04, but
that doesn't mean much. Even without that extreme case, there
is still a bug.

- Ed

[Tobias Heider (tobhe)]

Closing because I can't reproduce it on 1.81.6-18. Feel free to comment or reopen if the issue persists and you have more info on how to reproduce it.