Arch Linux

dhave

Arch Linux f@h Team Member

From: Outside the matrix.

Registered: 2005-05-15

Posts: 1,109

VirtualBox generating unwanted log files in home directory

Most of you probably caught this, but I didn't until just now. If you're using VirtualBox 1.6.4 and are seeing bunches of log files showing up in your home directory, you may need to read this, from the official VirtualBox download page:

Note: Unfortunately a bug slipped in which can cause a large amount of logging data to be written to your home directory. You can workaround this by making sure you have VBOX_LOG_DEST=nofile in your environment variables.

Sure enough, I had about a dozen biggish log files clogging up my home directory.

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Tired? There's a nap for that. --anonymous

arch0r

Member

From: From the Chron-o-John

Registered: 2008-05-13

Posts: 597

Re: VirtualBox generating unwanted log files in home directory

i thought of opening a thread because of this issue. it's annoying to delete the logfiles after each vbox session, even the logfiles are +10mb big + consist of human unreadable nonsense code oO

but you can edit the startup command, not to write any logfile:

#!/bin/bash
export VBOX_LOG_DEST=nofile
VirtualBox

iggyst00ge

Member

From: Indianapolis, IN

Registered: 2008-01-24

Posts: 50

Re: VirtualBox generating unwanted log files in home directory

I'm getting huge logfiles when using Virtualbox 3.0.6-2 (up to 20 GB if I leave the machine running long enough).  This used to be an official bug in version 1.6-ish, but somehow I've re-enabled this in my version of the software.

Setting environmental variables and creating a custom startup command, as shown above, does not prevent the log files from being created. 

Other ideas, perhaps for setting a file size limit to the log files?

Chris