topic /var full, cannot rm in Operating System - HP-UX

/var full, cannot rm

Ceesjan van Hattum — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:29:34 GMT

Hi,
My /var is 100%, due too a many many files in /var/tmp.
I'd like to rm /var/tmp/*, but there are too many arguments to use a "*".
ls : Too many arguments
rm : Too many arguments
ls | xargs -l rm doesn't seem to work either.
What to now ?

Regards,
Ceesjan

Re: /var full, cannot rm

Ian Box — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:34:11 GMT

Try:

for i in /var/tmp/*
do
rm $i
done

Regards,

Ian

Re: /var full, cannot rm

john korterman — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:36:10 GMT

Hi,
you could use the find command, e.g.:
# find /var/tmp/ -type f -name "whatever_with_wildcard" -exec ls -l {} \;
And if you get the correct output, substitute ls -l by rm.

regards,
John K.

Re: /var full, cannot rm

Robert-Jan Goossens — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:36:24 GMT

Hi CeesJan,

find /var/tmp -mtime +7 | while read LINE
do
rm $LINE
done

Hope it helps,

Robert-Jan.

Re: /var full, cannot rm

John Palmer — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:36:59 GMT

Try find with -exec:-

find /var/tmp -type f -mtime +X -exec rm {} \;

Where X = a number of days old.

Alternatively, you can still use rm but limit the number of files by specifying a less general argument. Something like:-

rm a* # remove all files starting with a
rm b*
rm aa*
rm bb*

etc depending what filenames you have.

Regards,
John

Re: /var full, cannot rm

Ravi_8 — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:47:01 GMT

Hi

#cd /var
#rm -rf tmp
#mkdir tmp

Re: /var full, cannot rm

Ceesjan van Hattum — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:51:36 GMT

Thanks the respons.
All options i already found myself, but the real solution was to find the processes which generate these files.
It seemed that i had more than 10 fbackup processes running.
By killing these fbackups, the /var was automatically reduced to 63%. The amount of files decrease just enough to let my wildcard-expension (*) work again.

Case closed
Thanks,
Ceesjan

Re: /var full, cannot rm

Colin Topliss — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:56:29 GMT

A note of caution here!

Don't forget that many system daemons/software place their lockfiles in /var/tmp (for example RaidManager). You don't necessarily want to remove everything or you could delete something the system needs.

I would look to see what is in the directory first using Robert Jan's solution (but echo rather than rm the line) then use John Palmers idea to delete blocks of files.

Re: /var full, cannot rm

Robin Wakefield — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:05:09 GMT

Hi Ceesjan

Check against a current /var/tmp file by running lsof - this will identify the process associated with the file.

rgds, Robin

Re: /var full, cannot rm

Steven E. Protter — Tue, 25 Feb 2003 13:33:27 GMT

You may have files loaded in the /var folder prior to mount.

Boot your system to single user mode.

shutdown -ry now

interupt the boot process when prompted

bo Y to interact with the IPL

hpux -is

Boots to single user mode, mounts nothing.

cd /var

There should be nothing there. If there is, list it and delete it or possbily move it somewhere else.

You can issue manual mount commands in single user mode.

mount /home

Then move the offending files there if applicable.

If files have been copied into /var while not mounted, they wont show up on a ls after a filesystem is mounted on the folder. Thus the files appear hidden and are tough to find.

Its happened to me a few times with flaky disks and finger mistakes.

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