How can I ensure that the files /var/log/messages.0, /var/log/kern.log.0, and /var/log/syslog.0 do not balloon out of control and take up my hard drive?
I recently booted up (using SimplyMEPIS 6.5), and after the login, when the KDE splash screen would usually appear, I was given the message:
Quote:
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Xsession: warning: unable to write to /tmp; X session may exit with an error
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I clicked "okay" -- then was taken back to the login, where the same thing happened several times. For some reason, the system after a while gave me this message:
Quote:
There was an error setting up inter-process communications for KDE. The message returned by the system was:
Could not read network connection list.
/home/shared/.DCOPserver_desktop__0
Please check that the "dcopserver" program is running!
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A little Web-checking suggested that my hard drive had filled up, and the output of
(when I logged in with the terminal, as root) showed that /dev/hdd4 (my MEPIS partition) was 100% used.
A couple of people suggested (for others with a similar problem) that one answer was to clean the .deb packages with
and even
This worked enough right away for me to use the GUI, but the next output of df -h (I ran it right away) showed that /dev/hdd4 was still 94% full -- so I was worried that my hard drive might fill up unexpectedly. A little poking around showed that three files in /var/log/ -- messages.0, kern.log.0, and syslog.0 -- were the leading culprits, each occupying 1.36 GB.
One or two logins (and complete powerings-down) later, none of those three files is above 776 K, and /dev/hdd4 is only 40% full -- and, since it's an 8-gig partition, that doesn't worry me a bit. What worries me is: how do I make sure something like this doesn't happen in the future? Have I already done it by running clean and autoclean? (Also, they don't show up in my list of installed packages, so how do I know that they're "installed" and that they'll do their job in the future?)
--Paul
