Re: var very full

>
>> On Sunday 08 October 2006 09:06, radhika wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> I am running netbsd 3.0 on i386.
>>> I  notice var is almost 50% of my 14G.
>>> In var I noticed a backups directory with etc, and var in it.
>>> What is the backups being used for?
>>> How can I clean up var ie. remove old files without breaking anything.
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>> Radhika
>>
>> /var/backups is used by /etc/security (see security.conf(5)) for more
>> details.
>> Basically, it's used to keep copies of vital files if they have changed.
>> This should not be that large and I personally do not recommend deleting
>> it.
>> Especially considering we're talking about a 14G drive here and not
>> something
>> smaller than a gig where the few megs you would recover would really
>> matter.
>>
>> You can try cleaning up /var/tmp  with
>> find /var/tmp -atime +3 -exec rm {} \;
>>
>> That will delete any files not access within three days.  You can also
>> delete
>> old log files (those with .gz in /var/logs) that you don't need anymore.
>>
>> But the big thing is to locate where the space is going,  Try "du -k |
>> sort -rn | head" for a good idea of where you should be looking.  The
>> larger
>> the directory or file the more you should look closely at it and see
>> what's
>> happening.  Once you know what is taking up the space, you will have a
>> better
>> idea of how to fix it and possibly prevent it from recurring.
>>
>> -Kevin
>>
>
> Kevin,
I forgot to mention in my earlier email that var is actually 15M (not G as
I had said in error).

> Thanks for your input. I tried doing the sort to see what was being
> written where most and got this resut:
> bash-3.1# du -k | sort -rn | head
> 16352   .
> 11258   ./db
> 9625    ./db/pkg
> 2698    ./log
> 1245    ./backups
> 750     ./spool
> 660     ./spool/clientmqueue
> 614     ./backups/etc
> 607     ./backups/work
> 396     ./db/pkg.refcount
> bash-3.1#
>
>
> It looks like my db directory is the culprit. This morning a releated
> problem was because var was > 50% full, postfix started complaining with
> error 452.
>
> smtpd_check_size: blocks 1024 avail 14313 min_free 0 msg_size_limit
> 10240000
> Oct  9 10:02:55 rootabega postfix/smtpd[6211]: NOQUEUE: reject: MAIL from
> unknown[218.57.97.17]: 452 Insufficient system storage; proto=SMTP
> helo=<aftertayst.com>
> Oct  9 10:02:55 rootabega postfix/smtpd[6211]: warning: not enough free
> space in mail queue: 14656512 bytes < 1.5*message size limit
> Oct  9 10:02:55 rootabega postfix/smtpd[6211]: > unknown[218.57.97.17]:
> 452 Insufficient system storage
> Oct  9 10:02:55 rootabega postfix/smtpd[6211]: watchdog_pat: 0x8082b48
>
>
> I have currently set min_message_size=750000 and min_queue_free=2024000.
>
> My question is to avoid further var being full problems, is there
> something I can do to set the /var/db to point to another slice?
>
> Thanks,
> Radhika
>



-- 
It is all a matter of perspective. You choose your view by choosing where
to stand.
Larry Wall
---