File System Purging

SCRATCH Filesystem

The SCRATCH filesystem (mounted under the /scratch directory) is subject to the 30-day file purge rule. Any file that has not been accessed in over 30 days will be purged. The purge process deletes files but not directories.

In order to help users identify old files in their /scratch directory, we generate one file per user, every morning. This file, namely /usr/local/var/lustre_stats/$USER.over30d.files.lst (where $USER refers to the user's UGA MyID), contains a list of all the files that this user has in his/her /scratch directory and that have not been accessed in over 30 days. This file provides the full path, the last accessed date, and the size of the files that have not been accessed in over 30 days. Because the /scratch filesystem only updates on-disk file access times every 5 days, the last accessed time reported in that list file is approximate and could be off by up to 5 days. The purging system understands this and will make sure the access time falls within the purge window before deleting the file.