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Re: Files piling up in /var/* directories



On Saturday 11 March 2006 13:47, Mike McCarty wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Saturday 11 March 2006 06:52, Charles wrote:
>>>I've noticed that I have files piling up in /var/cache, /var/log,
>>> and /var/lib.  These three folders now have 100 mb of files in
>>> them.
>>>
>>>
>>>Which of these must be present for the machine to run?  This is (at
>>>the moment) a home machine; I don't *need* the  log files, but I
>>>don't know what happens if I just delete the files in these three
>>>directories.
>>
>> That will eat your lunch.  If logrotate is properly setup, those
>> files will not grow beyond what they are as the old ones will be
>> expunged
>
>[snip]
>
>> With disc space a commodity thing, a 500 meg /var partition is
>
>But if you have only one disc, it is a fungible commodity, and
>reclamation is the way to go. I agree with logrotate. I use it,
>and my /var looks like this...
>
># du -s /var/* | sort -gr
>81528   /var/lib
>77484   /var/cache
>60184   /var/spool
>5416    /var/log
>1500    /var/tmp
>1132    /var/www
>128     /var/run
>32      /var/yp
>...
>
>I don't think that 5MB is too big for my log files. I *do* wonder
>about /var/spool, however. Hmm...
>
># du -s /var/spool/* | sort -gr
>57904   /var/spool/up2date
>2056    /var/spool/cups
>164     /var/spool/mail
>16      /var/spool/anacron
>...
>
>Yep, my package manager's the culprit. And...
>
># du -s /var/cache/* | sort -gr
>76056   /var/cache/yum
>1160    /var/cache/man
>196     /var/cache/gstreamer-0.8
>56      /var/cache/alchemist
>...
>
>Also my package manager.
>
>> unimaginable today, my /var/cache alone is 1,273,796 whatevers in
>> du's default format.  Which is not a big deal since /var is on
>> /dev/hdd, a
>
>That's way more than I would permit on my machine. I not only find
>it imaginable that /var would be < 500MB, my /var is < 300MB. And
>on occasion, I have cleaned out the package manager stuff (though
>it tends to come back).
>
># df
>Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
>/dev/hda5              7633264   6147620   1097896  85% /
>/dev/hda3                99075     24602     69358  27% /boot

7.5GB?  You'd better set the expiry in your email client to a shorter 
period too.  I've taken to gettin rid of old messages in some folders 
just to speed the agent up a bit.

And what are you using /dev/hda1 & 2 for, windoze?

tsk tsk...

>Not everyone can afford hundreds of Gigs of disc space.
>If disc is so cheap, will you buy me a new, larger drive?

See above, hda1 and hda2 probably have more than enough space to play 
in.  And lots of shops may have used 20's to 40's laying around, 
available for a $20 bill.  I'm not rich by any means, I'm 71 & almost 
retired, on SS, but that doesn't mean I'd starve if I bought another 
$120 300GB drive yet today.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.



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