I have /var as a partion. I notice the partion is filling as logs are created, obviously. How do I control this? Do I just delete them or do I access the files and erase them? no at all sure???

Example syslog do I

rm syslog

or do I open in editor and delete text and leave file intact?

If I do remove syslog does it just regenerate? Do I do this with all logs? Dont want to break my linux!

here is my df for logs:

/dev/hdb8 1.1G 825M 231M 79% /var

here is my log directory

./ btmp dmesg lastlog news/ security.log user.log Xorg.9.log.old
../ clamav/ drakbackup lpr/ prcsys.log spooler wtmp
acpid cron/ explanations mail/ scrollkeeper.log syslog Xorg.0.log
auth.log cups/ kdm.log messages secure syslog~ Xorg.0.log.old
boot.log daemons/ kernel/ messages~ security/ syslog~~ Xorg.9.log

Thanks in advance.

You didn't say which Linux distro you are using, but regardless, you very likely have a package named logrotate installed. It takes care of compressing old logs and deleting older logs to take care of this very problem.

If your /var partition is too small, you may want to edit /etc/logrotate.conf and change the line that says
rotate 4
to
rotate 3
or similar. This line determines how many weeks of logs are kept. Also, be sure that the line that says
compress
is uncommented so that old logs are compressed.

To learn more, see the command
man logrotate

Those logs can be crucially valuable to figuring out why something doesn't work, so it's unwise to delete them earlier than necessary. It's interesting to note how many people post questions on sites like this without first looking at their logs.

Thanks for that. I will try when I get home.

Im running Mandriva 2007. I guessed there probably was an automated tool. To my mind it would of made sense to of had it in the 'Configure your computer > System > check logs' menu.

Anyway thanks for that.