no way to swapoff a deleted swap file?

From: Peter Cordes
Date: Wed Oct 15 2008 - 16:52:05 EST


I unlinked a swapfile without realizing I was still swapping on it.
Now my /proc/swaps looks like this:
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/var/tmp/EXP/cache/swap/1\040(deleted) file 1288644 1448 -1
/var/tmp/EXP/cache/swap/2\040(deleted) file 1433368 0 -2

AFAICT, there's nothing I can pass to swapoff(2) that will make the
kernel let go of them. If that's the case, please consider this a
feature request for a way to do this. Now I'm going to have to reboot
before I can mkfs that partition.

If kswapd0 had a fd open on the swap files, swapoff /proc/$PID/fd/3
could possibly work. But it looks like the files are open but with no
user-space accessable file descriptors to them. Which makes sense,
except for this case.

thanks, and happy hacking,

--
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cor , des.ca)

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BC
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