54 GB in /var/log!!

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2008-10-27 at 14:24 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:54:54 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 2008-10-26 at 20:12 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> 	[....]
> >> 	Obviously, I want to cut /var/log with electronic double-bitted
> >> axes in both hands, to get to my user's GUI again; and to find the
> >> source of the bloat and correct it.
> >> 
> >> 	What should I do first??
> > ----
> > from command line, cut down your large log files by locating them...
> > 
> > # find /var/log -type f -size +2000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print
> > $8 ": " $5 }'
> 
> 	I can't see for sure how many spaces, if any, there are between 
> "print" and "$8"; but I can experiment.
> 
> 	Meanwhile, however, I'm getting other troubles. One error message 
> says "invalid argument + to size". 
> 
> 	The man page is way beyond me to slog through in less than about 
> six months; but I did find a + on it; so I tried using the other + key. 
> No joy.
> 
> 	I also get an error message saying "missing argument to -exec"
----
it's just a simple command to print a list of all log files greater than
20 Mb.

If you can't manage to just type it out as it was given, just do 'ls
-lh /var/log' and you can inspect each file for size.
----
>  
> > and any file that is really large (i.e. /var/log/Xorg.0.log)
> > 
> > command line empty it...
> > # > /var/log/Xorg.0.log
> > 
> > if startx only works as root, it sounds as if some permission isn't
> > correct (possibly /etc/X11/xorg.conf is not 644, readable by all users).
> > Of course if that were the issue, /var/log/Xorg.0.log would tell you
> > that or if it were some other permissions issue, the problem would
> > probably be listed in /var/log/messages

> I'm very weak on permissions; I can never remember the mnemonic 
> for those numbers. but I'll try "cd /etc/X11" and then "ls -l" to see if 
> that tells me anything either comprehensible or repeatable.
----
read  = 4
write = 2
exec  = 1

rwxrwxrwx
^^^^^^^^^
|  |  |
|  |  other
|  group
owner

thus rwx______ is 700
     rw_rw_rw_ is 444
     rw_r__r__ is 644
----
> > On Fedora 9, it often is enough to just do something like # mv
> > /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-bak # shutdown now -r
> > 
> > and it is automatically rebuilt upon reboot
> 
> 	I tried that, and got only the dread "out of range" message. I'll 
> try again with "system-config-display" and "system-config-display --
> reconfig" It would be a great help to get X back for my user, if only to 
> enable c&p between the CLI and Pan.
> 
> 	Many thanks to all for the help so far!
----
seems odd because reports I have heard about Fedora 9 is that it
automatically builds xorg.conf if not present.

init 3
log in as root
system-config-display --reconfig
init 5

should do the trick though

Craig