Re: rm-ing files with open file descriptors

[J Sloan <jjs@lexus.com>]

Normal unix behaviour -

It's always been that way....

jjs

Doug Alcorn wrote:

>I had a weird situation with my application where the user deleted all
>the database files while the app was still reading and writing to the
>opened file descriptor.  What was weird to me was that the app didn't
>complain.  It just went merrily about it's business as if nothing were
>wrong.  Of course, after the app shut down all it's data was lost.
>
>Since I didn't expect this behavior I wrote a simple little program to
>test it[1].  Sure enough, you can rm a file that has opened file
>descriptors and no errors are generated.  Interestingly, sun solaris
>does the same thing.  Since this is the case, I thought this might be
>a feature instead of a bug (ms-win doesn't allow the rm).  So, my
>question is where is this behavior defined?  Is it a kernel issue?
>Does POSIX define this behavior?  Is it a libc issue?  
>
>I tried to google this, but couldn't think of the right terms to
>describe it.  As I'm not on lkm, I would appreciate a CC: to
><doug@lathi.net>.
>