How to cleanup /var ?

fiod · 2008-06-19 18:41:40

Hey,

I've noticed that the '/var' directory uses up 8 GB (!) on my Arch installation, up for about 8 months.

How can I clean '/var' up safely?

Thanks
fiod

sph · 2008-06-19 19:04:58

Clean your /var/cache/pacman/pkg/:

pacman -Scc

This will probably free a lot of space in /var.

Last edited by sph (2008-06-19 19:10:09)

fiod · 2008-06-19 19:23:48

Thanks for the tip, that obviously helped.

But still, /var is about 4.5 Gigs, mostly in /var/log.

How can I clean up the logs?

Thanks
fiod

sph · 2008-06-19 19:49:40

man logrotate

For example, try low values with the "rotate" directive.

See also: http://www.linux.com/articles/48390

Berticus · 2008-06-19 19:52:34

your log rotator should've taken care of this... If you really have that many logs, you should think about reading them. Typically if something wrong happens, it's logged. Having a large amount of logs indicates that something may not be working very well and would require your attention.

fiod · 2008-06-20 09:32:40

thanks a lot for all the tips.

Will go over my logs, to see whats going on..

fiod

.:B:. · 2008-06-20 14:05:54

4.5 GB of logs means something is spitting out errors - a lot.

First clean it out, then activate log rotation & compression, should help a bit at least if you cannot structurally solve the problems of the huge logs.

fiod · 2008-06-20 18:09:38

Hey,

I got lots of these blocks in my 'everything.log' file:

Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_midi_event_free
Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_midi_event_no_status
Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_use_lock_sync_helper
Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_seq_event_port_detach
Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_midi_event_new
Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_midi_event_decode
Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_seq_create_kernel_client
Jun 19 21:51:33 lg-tux snd_seq_oss: Unknown symbol snd_seq_kernel_client_write_poll

looks related to alsa somehow, though I am not quite sure how to fix the problem.

Looks like this takes up most of the log file.

sph · 2008-06-20 19:12:30

What sound hardware are you using?

.:B:. · 2008-06-21 13:38:05

That means somehow you got incompatible kernel modules. Do you still have some lingering around that you installed separately from the kernel?

Arch Linux

#1 2008-06-19 18:41:40

How to cleanup /var ?

#2 2008-06-19 19:04:58

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#3 2008-06-19 19:23:48

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#4 2008-06-19 19:49:40

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#5 2008-06-19 19:52:34

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#6 2008-06-20 09:32:40

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#7 2008-06-20 14:05:54

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#8 2008-06-20 18:09:38

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#9 2008-06-20 19:12:30

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

#10 2008-06-21 13:38:05

Re: How to cleanup /var ?

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