UTIL X 7 (Clean utf_files Directory) to be executed on a regular basis?

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
Is it recommended performing UTIL X 7 (Clean utf_files Directory) on a regular basis (e.g. weekly or monthly)? Can it be done during working hours?

Resolution:
Ex Libris advices against performing UTIL X 7 (Clean utf_files Directory) on a regular basis.

There is no need for performing this job regularly as it will not improve performance. Also the files in utf_files-directory do not allocate much disk space.
The files which it deletes are files which the system is going to put back out there very shortly anyway, so there is no point it deleting them.

Usually UTIL X 7 should not have any bad impact on your Aleph system, but in very rare cases problems may occur because of UTIL X 7.
These problems might appear in situations where the Aleph system is very busy (for example because of many parallel GUI- and WWW-acceses or heavy index activity in ue_01) while you are deleting the utf_files. In such a situation it might happen that two processes are trying to load the same (non-existing) utf_file at the same moment. One of the processes might then load and use an empty or incomplete version of this file. To avoid such situations, please do not use UTIL X 7 during main working hours of your system or while your system is busy with index activity.