Tombstones !

[Michael Bowler]

I am trying to do some clearing out on an HP-UX machine. I am looking at /var/tombstones and I have over 50 tombstones dating back over 2 years. Having looked at them they all seem to be near identical. Are these something that can deleted if they are not current. I was thinking of removing any over 6 months old. I would be grateful for any information on this.

Regards,

Michael.

[Tracey]

I had the same question recently. When I call ed tech support, they told me I could remove them safely (make sure they have no current errors first!)

[Ajitkumar Rane]

Yes its OK to remove the old files in /var/tombstones.
the ts99 files in /var/tombstones actually hold the HPMC errors, basically the PIM. this file is created if your system rebooted or panic'd and has any HPMC errors.

[Steffi Jones_1 · Accepted solution]

Hi Michael,

here is some background (from what I know).

Every time you reboot the box a new tombstone file will be created and will be called ts99 ... all other ts files move up to ts98 ts97, etc.
The ts files will have valid hardware related information. If you have a hardware problem and the box crashes because of that reason you will find HPMC information (High Priority Machine Check) in there.
This is an important information for troubleshooting which part went bad on you.

But you can easily remove older files... keep the last 1-3 files and you are set.

Steffi Jones