/var full, cannot rm

[Ceesjan van Hattum]

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

[Ian Box]

Try:

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

Regards,

Ian

[john korterman]

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.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi CeesJan,

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

Hope it helps,

Robert-Jan.

[John Palmer]

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

[Ravi_8]

Hi

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

[Ceesjan van Hattum]

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

[Colin Topliss]

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.

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi Ceesjan

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

rgds, Robin

[Steven E. Protter]

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.

SEP