UserIdTable.new file?

[esmandil]

Hello,

From time to time I see a file "UserIdTable.new" in my ioftpd/etc directory, alongside normal "UserIdTable". Does anybody know what is it used for?

My guess is that ioftpd writes changes to userlist to UserIdTable.new sometimes, instead of UserIdTable... Am I right? Does anyone have any idea why is that so? Or when are the changes written back to UserIdTable?

I am trying to determine why users seem to disappear randomly from my server (no trace in any of the logs), and this file is currently my number one suspect...

Thanks for any help :)

[Mouton]

That file is used everytime the UserIdTable changes.
The new updated file is written as .new, then the old UserIdTable file is deleted, and the .new is renamed to UserIdTable.
This is to prevent crashes caused by an invalid UserIdTable in case the updated file couldn't be written correctly (HD full or such).

[esmandil]

Thanks for the explanation, it is really helpful.

Now, the only question is why the UserIdTable.new file is kept around, and why isn't it renamed to UserIdTable in my case? When I try to rename it by hand, I get "file is being used by another process" error... maybe the same problem is preventing ioftpd from renaming the file?

Any ideas?

[Mouton]

UserIdTable is in use by ioFTPD.
If you want to replace this file, u need to close ioFTPD, then delete it, then rename the .new to UserIdTable.
Are u using NTFS or FAT32 ?
Did you try a chkdsk /f on the partition that has ioFTPD installed ?

[esmandil]

UserIdTable is in use by ioFTPD.

Actually, it is not - or at least not always. I have just verified that I am able to delete UserIdTable while ioFTPD is running (on my other system).

So something else must be locking the file. I will investigate further.

Are u using NTFS or FAT32?

NTFS. Do you think it matters?

Did you try a chkdsk /f on the partition that has ioFTPD installed ?

I didn't - good idea, though. I will try that later when I get access to the box.