log.nmbd is a huge, unremovable file

Hi All,

Noticed that people have been reporting problems with Windows sharing and the creation of HUGE log fiiles. I think that I'm reporting the largest file to date: a whopping 85 GB file.

I've stopped Windows file sharing, checked/repaired permissions, fixed disk etc., but the problem is that I can not delete the file. I always get a kernel panic if I try to rm it, srm it, cp /dev/null log.nmbd, etc.

How can I recover what amounts to about HALF of my hard disk?

Eric

iMac Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Aug 9, 2006 9:17 AM

28 replies

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 8, 2006 12:21 PM in response to Eric C. Brown

Not sure if this answers anything, but I used Disk Utility to make a blank DMG on a drive that had 105.76GB available Free Space, that was...
Capacity : 97.7 GB (104,857,559,040 Bytes)

Copied a few MB to it will it was mounted, Ejected it.

8.1GB available Free Space on that drive, moved the file to the Trash, emptied the Trash, in an instant there was 105.76GB available Free Space.

Hmmm, just wondering... I have Journaling shut OFF on all my Drives!?

Sep 8, 2006 2:07 PM in response to BDAqua

Would be interested to see if it is Journaling that is causing the problem!

Open Terminal.app (in Applications/Utilities). Now type:

cd /Volumes/WHATEVER THE_EXTERNAL_VOLUME_ISCALLED
cat /dev/zero > test.dat

(now wait a while. you can open a second terminal window, then cd into that directory, and watch the size by typing ls -lh [that's ell-ess-space-dash-ell-h])

when you reach 100 GB of data, then hit CTRL-C in the other window to kill that process. Then, try to delete the file with

rm test.dat

(then try with journaling enabled in Disk Utilities)

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 8, 2006 3:38 PM in response to Eric C. Brown

Made it... 103216635904 8 Sep 15:14 test.dat.
rm test.dat removed the file and returned the Free Space to where it was.

I guess I'll try Journaling now...

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 8, 2006 6:06 PM in response to Eric C. Brown

Nope, no diff, sooo... Journaling+RMing on the System Disk still might be a problem, no way for me to test that.

You might try booting off a differnt HD and trashing it and/or turn Journaling off. 🙂

Sep 8, 2006 8:47 PM in response to Eric C. Brown

Eric--

Notwithstanding, there is something very very wrong
with the deletion of these massive files. What is so
bad about it is that I would imagine a number of
situations where I would want a file this big --
digital video, HDF5 files, etc.

I have to agree with BDAqua on this: it must have been something peculiar to your setup. I've deleted plenty of enormous files (uncompressed high definition video files) without a problem. These are files that are essentially QuickTime movies with a playback rate of 120MB/second. They can easily run up to a couple hundred GB in size.

I'm pretty sure that deleting files doesn't touch the file's data anyway. All you're doing is marking the directory entry for that file to tell the OS to re-use that space. Unless you use one of the "Secure Erase" options, that is...

charlie

Sep 9, 2006 3:16 PM in response to Charles Minow

Hi Charlie and BDAqua,

Perhaps the main difference between BDAqua's test and my (and many others on the list) case is that my startup hard disk filled up completely. Maybe this left some "loose ends." Also, perhaps it is an Intel Mac thing.

I still don't know why I could not delete (via rm, srm, drag to trash, several freeware utilities, etc etc etc) this huge file!

Eric

Sep 20, 2006 1:00 PM in response to Eric C. Brown

Did anyone figure out how to remove this log file?
My disk is almost full on my imac!

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 20, 2006 3:33 PM in response to Randy Lust

Requires a second Mac, but anybody try FWTDM yet?

Oogoo

Level 1

25 points

Oct 15, 2006 1:12 PM in response to Eric C. Brown

Hi. I've detected a huge file called qmastertaskd.crash.log file (17gb) and I trashed it. When I tried to empty the trash I got a panic freeze (the greyout multilanguage warning saying you have to press restart...) This happened repeatedly, even when I booted the system from another disk or on target mode, from my laptop.
I found a program called trashit that apparently was successfull at emtieng the trash can but now the system doesnt boot at all. Tried again booting from my secondary system but as sson as the HD that had this log file starts to mount the comuter freezess in the same way as before. Tried mounting the guilty HD has an external FW and the same happens.

I logged as a Super User to see if could make some sense of it but my knowldge of Unix is very limited and i'm not sure what I'm doing.

This dodgy HD seems to be recognized as a p[ossible boot disk if I press alt at boot so I think its not failed, but I suspect the huge log file has take all the space available and emptytrash failed somehow.

Any Help much appreciated.

Thanks

G4 AGP 2x 1.3GHZ Sonnet Mac OS X (10.4.8) ATI 9800 Pro 1GB memory

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Oct 15, 2006 1:31 PM in response to Oogoo

Boot from the Install CD/DVD and at rhe 1st screen go up to the Menubar and find Disk Utility... use that to Repair that Disk and Permissions.

Oogoo

Level 1

25 points

Oct 16, 2006 4:42 AM in response to BDAqua

booting from cd (press c) causes the same problem: i get the grey apple with the sppining dial for about 30 seconds, then a blue screen for 1 or two seconds, the apple progress bar comes up with 'preparing installation' message. Now it panics and I get the multilanguage warning "You need to restart you computer. Hold down the power button, etc.

Once or twice it went as far as showing me the apple menu bar at the top of the screen and an installer window but immediately followed by the same freeze, obvioulsy as the system was tring to mount the guilty HD(called System disk 71gb).

I need the files in that disk, so for now reformat is out of the picture, but even if I did want to format, the system doesn't even let me read the HD.

I booted as super user and tried to fsck the HD and got the following error message:

/volumes/system disk 17gb is not a character device
continue? y/n

(I answer Y)

** /volumes/systemdisk 71gb (NO WRITE)

CANNOT READ: BLK 16
Continue? Y/N

(I Answer Y)

The following disk Sectors could not be read: 16, 17, 18 (...)30, 31, ioctl (GCINFO): Innappropriate IOCTL for device
FSCK: /Volumes/sytem disk 71gb: can't read disk label

I cant work out why the disk is read only. if I ls - l gives me rwxr-xr-x permission, owned by root (i get 3 links for that disk, while the disk i'm booting from gets ony 1- could it be relevant?)

Thanks

G4 AGP 2x 1.3GHZ Sonnet Mac OS X (10.4.8) ATI 9800 Pro 1GB memory

Oogoo

Level 1

25 points

Oct 16, 2006 7:39 AM in response to BDAqua

UPDATE:

I have managed to run fsck by disconnecting my secondary HD and booting as single user. This forced a boot from the guilty HD. I can run fsck with no errors. (Is there a way of correcting permissions from a shell?) If I try to run /sbin/mount -uw / to mount it as read/write it panics and hangs.

I can access files anywhere on the disk, which gives me hope i'll be able to retrieve something. I tried to clear some space by deleting an old DVD TS_Video Folder and it tells me it's a 'Read-only File System' (even when i sudo rm). So at the moment i'm trying to mount the disk as a write FS so I can liberate some space and see if that will get things moving a bit. Any Suggestions? Thanks.

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Oct 16, 2006 10:30 AM in response to Oogoo

Might try...
sudo diskutil repairPermissions /

or...
/sbin/diskutil repairpermissions /

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log.nmbd is a huge, unremovable file