Files in DLCWRK folder aren't getting deleted, causing disk space utilization to spike

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progress_rob

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Details: We have a Windows Server 2019 running in an EC2 instance. And within that we have a Progress OpenEdge 11.7.17 server. An issue that first cropped up about a month ago, and has happened about 4 times in total so far, is that the space utilization on our E: drive (which contains the Progress working folder DLCWRK) begins steadily creeping up for no apparent reason, and then continues that way until it reaches 98, 99 percent. At which point we have no choice but to reboot the entire server. After the reboot, it immediately drops down to normal levels (~30%). The E: drive should have enough space, about 200 GB, but when the issue begins it takes less than 24 hours for all that space to get eaten up.

Using WizTree, we were able to find that the disk space usage is in a folder called E:\$Extend\$Deleted. Which, after some Googling, I found out is a hidden directory used by the NTFS system for files that are slated for deletion but are still locked by some process. We are unable to figure out a way to clear this $Deleted folder, or even figure out what process is preventing the files from being deleted.

Since the E: drive contains basically only the DLCWRK folder, we are wondering if there might be some process that is keeping a handle on those files open and preventing them from being deleted correctly. This leads to the files remaining on disk, and this causes the available free space on disk to reduce over time.

Has anyone encountered this issue before and has an idea of how to resolve it? Or, even any suggestions as to what steps to take to investigate this behaviour further would be appreciated. TIA!
 
Hi @Rob Fitzpatrick, thanks for your reply. Yeah we have not specified the -T parameter separately, so the temporary files are also being written to the same folder, E:\DLCWRK. Do you believe these files might be related to the issue at hand?
 
They could be. The DBI files (temp-table database) in particular can grow quite large when there is extensive use of temp-tables. I have seen them grow to hundreds of megabytes per session. Of course this is completely dependent on application code, data, and user behaviour, so I can't provide insight into what your file sizes should be.

By default, temporary files have the hidden attribute in the file system. You can change that by adding the -t client startup parameter to make the files visible while they are being used.

Some additional notes on -t:
  • Ordinarily, when a session terminates gracefully it cleans up its temporary files. And if the session crashes, you don't need to clean them up because the files are unlinked. This latter point changes with -t; you will need to manually clean up these files if the session crashes.
  • The -t parameter is not permitted when the database is enabled for encryption via OpenEdge TDE.
 
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