/debug

[Eugene Gholz]

I'm a little confused about what the directory /debug is for -- or, more
to the point, how it is used.  Various big files seem to constantly
appear in the /debug directory -- and constantly to be updated since 
ls -l reports new dates for the last file update quite regularly.  These
files, however, never seem to vanish entirely -- they are just a permanent (?)
fixture of my file system.  Furthermore, they are not readable or writeable,
even by root, even though their permissions indicate that they are both.
The service guy that SGI sent out here to fix an unrelated problem (as far as
both he and I could tell, unrelated, that is) didn't have much of a clue
what was going on in this directory at all.  In fact, he was surprised that
there even was a /debug directory that I could cd into.  Any ideas what's
going on?  The only reason that I even noticed this directory was that when
doing a full system backup with bru -Z, the last tape starts trying to
back-up files /debug/00001, etc., and gets read errors, "can't compress"
errors, and "warning - file truncated" messages.  The conclusion of the SGI
support staff that I was in touch with was that the only way to get a system
backup without errors was to exclude filenames beginning with /debug from my
bru command...  This seems really odd to me.
Any information will be much appreciated.  I'm really curious.
Thanks,
Eugene Gholz
(eugholz at athena.mit.edu)