[PLUG] rm -rf somedir/ curiosity

[MJang]

Hi, 

I and a colleague had an annoying problem with a VM earlier today -- we
needed to make room on that VM, and rm -rf'd a couple of directories. 
        
The deletion proceeded verrrrrrrrrrrry slowly, like maybe 100Kb deleted
per minute.
        
It only came up to "normal" speeds when my colleague stopped the running
instance of Tomcat on that system.
        
But we could not come up with any reason why Tomcat would affect the rm
-rf process, and my Googles don't get an answer either.
        
Thanks,
Mike