topic Re: Houskeeping in Operating System - Linux

Houskeeping

Clarence J — Mon, 28 May 2001 07:32:53 GMT

Hi everyone,

I noticed that my root filesystem space is running out fast.

What files can I clear up in order to free up some space?

All help appreciated.

Re: Houskeeping

Vincenzo Restuccia — Mon, 28 May 2001 08:57:08 GMT

#find / -size +xxx

Re: Houskeeping

Laurent Paumier — Mon, 28 May 2001 10:58:08 GMT

Check for files in /dev :
find /dev -type f

Do not keep files in /root. /root is located on the root filesystem.

Re: Houskeeping

Clarence J — Tue, 29 May 2001 00:40:41 GMT

Thks. But I want to know which are the files that can be remved or trimmed. I saw many files in /dev but I'm sure I can't remove them all.

Are there any log files that can be trimmed? I know 'bout wtmp. In HP-UX you have SAM (System Admin. Manager) where you cld run it and do the daily admin. What 'bout Linux RedHat?

Thks pple!

Re: Houskeeping

Benny Chandra — Tue, 29 May 2001 01:56:07 GMT

Check whether your /var is mounted on different FS. If not then you should clean up some log files in /var.

Re: Houskeeping

Mark Fenton — Tue, 29 May 2001 17:15:19 GMT

Clarence, The suggestion to remove/trim log files is probably the best. Again it depends on where the /var directory resides. On my installation, I set things up so:
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 1011M 125M 835M 14% /
/dev/hda6 1011M 383M 577M 40% /home
/dev/hda5 3.9G 2.1G 1.6G 56% /usr
/dev/hda7 3.9G 2.6G 1.1G 70% /usr/local
/dev/hdc1 504M 67M 411M 14% /var
/dev/hdb 96M 16M 79M 17% /zip

because I had a lot of room on my drive, and wanted to ensure that there was plenty of space for logging.

Log files can be fair game for trimming, but be warned, they exist for a purpose, and deleting them willy-nilly can leave you in the dark about the causes of problems down the road.

Short of adding drive space, you could move files around. Say you found that the file that was hogging the root space was a database or important logfile that you couldn't do without, you could link the directory where the file should normally go to a filesystem that has more space. Say your /home file system had enough room to handle the files you need to move:
# mkdir /home/filesystem
# mv -r /too_big_file_directory /home/filesystem
# ln -s /home/filesystem /too_big_file_dirctory

Best regards,

Mark