my root disk is growing..help

[Cindy Wolford]

Hi,

OK, I've noticed that my root disk is growing. I have a hunch is has something to do with the lp directory....maybe a runaway lp scheduler or something?

We have 10.20.

Can someone tell me how to check to see if we have a runaway lp scheduler or something?

Or does anyone else have any ideas where to look?

No new tombstones. Nothing reported in error logs I've viewed thus far....

Cin

[Georg Tresselt]

I would use "du -s * " first on root level and then repeatedly on the directories that occupy the most space to see where files are growing out of control.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi cindy,

Start from /dev. sometimes in place of using /dev/rmt/0m if someone used /dev/dev/0 it might start creating a file over there.

Use this command to find the directories that are taking most space and drill down from there,

du -ks * |sort -n

Hope this helps.

Regds

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If someone does an lp -c then the file is copied to /var/spool/lp before being printed. This lets the original file be safely deleted after submitting the printjob.
Do an lpstat -t and see if there are many jobs waiting to be printed. Rather than trying to use "The Force", I suggest that you first tell us what "my root disk is growing" means. Does that mean / is filling up or does it mean that another filesystem is filling up? You need to narrow the scope a bit.

[Cindy Wolford]

Hi again,

I just stopped the lp scheduler, I found no runaway processes (used ps -ef and grep for lpsched)

So it appears lp is not my problem.

Noone has access to root other than myself. Backups/cron/printers, heck nothing has been changed/added for the past year at least.

I'm still looking at log files for errors....nothing striking yet.

No core files are on the system.

I'm stumped as to what might be happening but root is still growing at a slow pace.

I have opened a case with HP and am awaiting a tech to call me.

Any advice/ideas on where to look will be greatly appreciated.

boohoo.
Cin

[Ivajlo Yanakiev]

First come down.
give as output from
#mount
also
#vgdisplay -v

See which file is access last 100 min
find / -mount -amin 100
find / -mount -mminute 100

also
# du -h /
#bdf

[Ivajlo Yanakiev]

Try
find / -mount -ctime 1
show all file that was change last 24 hours

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi Cindy,
What do you call root disk? Are you talking of the files sytem / ?
If so, if you believe it has grown, there is a possibility someone mis-spelled a device and writing to it generated a big file the classic one is with the tape devices...
Do a du -sk . in /dev, the size should be around 30 MB on a 10.20.

If you see >100Mb look for a big file...


All the best
Victor

[bhavin asokan]

hi cindy,

assuming the mentioned root disk is root volume and mounted in / mount point.
use the following command to find the files

find / -xdev -size +1000000c -exec ll {} \;

this command will list all files only in root volume which is more than 1MB.find any bigger files are there.also see any repeated files .

regds,

[Bill Hassell]

Actually, the command:

du -kxs /dev

should produce just a few Kbytes since there are (should be) no ordinary files in /dev, just device files and a few directories. Start by analyzing your root directory to see where the biggest *directories* (not files) are located:

du -kx / | sort -rn | more

The biggest directory should be /sbin and /etc. My guess is that someone installed software in / rather than in /opt and there are likely logfiles in those directories.

/ must be a static (and small) filesystem. Post the results of the above command (the first 10 lines or so)