Odd files

I've been running postgresql for quite a while now. And it's been
working with minimal errors, leaving me in a fat, dumb and happy state.
Recently though, I ran out of disk space on my 1 partition. Upon
investigation, it appears that one of my databases was to blame. But
here's the odd part:

[base/cm]>ls -l

-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.0
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.1
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.2
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.3
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.4
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.5
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.6
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.0
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.1
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.2
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.3
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.4
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.5
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.6
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 115482624 Dec 18 23:46
pg_sorttemp3946.0
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 109785088 Dec 18 23:46
pg_sorttemp3946.1
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 100233216 Dec 18 23:46
pg_sorttemp3946.2
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 86548480 Dec 18 23:46 pg_sorttemp3946.3
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 63303680 Dec 18 23:46 pg_sorttemp3946.4
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 43204608 Dec 18 23:46 pg_sorttemp3946.5
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 Dec 19 09:37 pg_sorttemp3946.6

My questions:
What are these files?
Are they safe to delete?

Thanks for any input

-Rob

Those are temporary files used for sorting. It was a probably a cleanup
problem on 6.5 (perhaps the query aborted or something leaving the files?
not sure). As long as you know that the process is still not using them
they should be safe to delete. (And you should probably update to 7.1
when it comes out :) )

Stephan Szabo
sszabo@bigpanda.com

On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Robert Dege wrote:

I've been running postgresql for quite a while now. And it's been
working with minimal errors, leaving me in a fat, dumb and happy state.
Recently though, I ran out of disk space on my 1 partition. Upon
investigation, it appears that one of my databases was to blame. But
here's the odd part:

[base/cm]>ls -l

-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.0
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.1
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.2
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.3
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.4
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.5
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000 pg_sorttemp2662.6
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.0
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.1
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.2
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.3
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.4
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.5
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 May 28 2000
pg_sorttemp32606.6
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 115482624 Dec 18 23:46
pg_sorttemp3946.0
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 109785088 Dec 18 23:46
pg_sorttemp3946.1
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 100233216 Dec 18 23:46
pg_sorttemp3946.2
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 86548480 Dec 18 23:46 pg_sorttemp3946.3
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 63303680 Dec 18 23:46 pg_sorttemp3946.4
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 43204608 Dec 18 23:46 pg_sorttemp3946.5
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 0 Dec 19 09:37 pg_sorttemp3946.6

My questions:
What are these files?
Are they safe to delete?

Thanks for any input

-Rob