/xfn directory

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hi all,
On Solaris systems, I often find a direcotry named: /xfn
I often find myself frozen when I try either try to cd or ls this directory.
This is a problem for this case when I try to find the core files for the system

find / -ln -name core

When the command get to the /xfn dir, it will hang the process.

I tried to look at www.sun.com for the description to the /xfn dir but was not able to find the answer.
Please let me know if you have any reference about this directory and what is the cause for the hanging process.
Thnks,
Vu

2

Check the man page for xfn and Intro to FNS

And your -ln doesn't seem to be an option of the find command...

I could cd to the directory and list it's contents with ls -lR - no hang on either Solaris 8 or 2.6.

3

Thanks for your reply,
I am digging moe about these stuff. But anyway what could be the cause for these process to hang since we don't manually handle this directory and therefore it's harder to troubleshoot. Thanks,
Vu

4

If you are using NIS, check to see if it's part of the auto_master - it might be that it use to be used and at some point in time removed but the auto_master list wasn't updated.

$ ypcat auto_master
auto_pkgs -bg,soft,intr,nosuid,nodev
auto_home -nobrowse,bg,soft,intr
-xfn
-hosts -nosuid,nobrowse
auto_adm -bg,hard,nointr,nosuid,nodev
auto_u -bg,soft,intr
auto_direct -bg,soft,intr

If it is, then you need to start digging on the why and how. That's the only reason I can think of at the moment - someone else might be able to add more.

Added Note: Very good, oombera, I had forgotten that little extra SUN threw in on 2.6 find command.

5

Well, this may not be the same exact problem, but it seems related. Look about half-way for the topic "Why does 'find' never finish in Solaris?" Could be something to try...

6

Thank you all,
Epecially Oombera, the doc states the exact problem.
Vu

7

I just want to make a note.
I notice that this problem happens only with an upgraded Solaris 8 system. At my site we have a couple systems with Solaris 8. Few of them was upgraded from Solaris 7 and few are fresh installed. This problem happens to all the systems that are using the upgraded version. The freshly installed Solaris 8 systems has the same configurations in the /etc/auto_master files and the /xfn files mounted; however, they are working flawlessly.
So the problem could be in the upgrade version of Solaris 8.
Thanks to all,
Vu