54 GB in /var/log!!

[Beartooth]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:49:32 +0000, Simon Andrews wrote:

> Beartooth wrote:
	[....]
>> What could be causing this, and what do i do about it??
> 
> Probably something's gone wrong and is logging the same message over and
> over again.
> 
> Quick way to find it:
> 
> cd /var/log
> 
> ls -ltrh
> 
> This list all files with the newest file last (your log file was
> probably the last thing written), and with human readable file sizes.
> You'll probably see one enormous file.  If you don't see it then try the
> same thing down a directory level
> 
> ls -ltrh */*
> 
> Once you've found the offending file do tail -500 [whatever file name]
> to see the last messages written to it, it's probably going to be the
> same thing over and over again.
> 
> Once you know what the message is you can look to fixing it.  You can
> also delete the offending file so your machine can start working again.
> 
> Hope this helps

	As you'll've likely seen by now, I got a bit turned around when 
suddenly startx no longer worked even for root, and whomped the bloated 
file with Craig White's big hammer, before somebody gave me a better way 
than I knew to look at it from the CLI.

	So I'm back on the #1 machine, using the whole GUI as user, able 
to c&p from gnome-terminal to Pan; but the bloat is gone. I *think* that 
means the info those commands'd've gotten is gone, too. 

	At any rate, ls -ltrh found nothing bigger than about 300K.

	ls -ltrh */* found somewhat bigger ones, but nothing remotely 
near so horrendous as to run into gigabytes.

[root at Hbsk2 log]# ls -ltrh */*
-rw-r--r-- 1 privoxy privoxy    0 2008-09-02 08:34 privoxy/logfile
-r-------- 1 root    root    5.1M 2008-09-17 16:23 audit/audit.log.3
-r-------- 1 root    root    5.1M 2008-09-18 00:21 audit/audit.log.2
-r-------- 1 root    root    5.1M 2008-09-18 08:19 audit/audit.log.1
-rw------- 1 root    lp       345 2008-09-19 17:31 cups/page_log-20080920
	[....]
-rw------- 1 root    root     728 2008-10-27 11:51 mail/statistics
-rw------- 1 root    root    3.3M 2008-10-27 12:01 audit/audit.log

samba/old:
total 0
[root at Hbsk2 log]#

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck
Not Quite Clueless Linux Power User
I have precious (very precious) 
little idea where up is.