Clearing the var/log/adm/messages?
 

I just checked my var/log/adm/messages and its becoming very full..How can I clear those messages so they will not take any space up?

thanks

Can you clarify about which files are growing ?

Im sorry..its

/var/adm/messages

Error files
 

It seems they are readable log files.
see ls -al messages*
View them and delete the old ones, if u don't want them.

# ls -al messages
messages: No such file or directory


I dont get it...Can you explain or post a command on how to remove all of those messages and let the logs start all over again? Thanks

Or...can I just logon as root and then highlight the ones that I dont need and then just hit the backspace button? Please explain..

What version of solaris are you using?

If it's 9 or higher you can use logadm to manage the logs. I believe it is a root cron job by default.

If you just want to delete the logs cat /dev/null > /var/adm/messages .

messages*
 

Dear as400
ls -al messages* (Note the '*')

Also see man syslogd

# Apr 5 11:02:45 unknown su: 'su root' succeeded for vinand on /dev/pts/4
ls -al messages*
messages*: No such file or directory


I tried that too WITH the * before also....

I just want to clear all the logs to prevent them from taking up disk space. And then I want them to restart again...

Thats all.

Sorry
 

Im sorry..its

ls -al /var/adm/messages*

In my system I have many files.
messages (this is latest, So I can remove the remaining below)
messages.0
messages.1 etc

Plus u can
ls /etc/syslog.conf
If it exists do the following
>/var/adm/messages
syslogd -f /etc/syslog.conf

Now u see ls -al /var/adm/messages*

$ ls -al /var/adm/messages*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10586 Apr 5 14:03 /var/adm/messages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2133982 Apr 5 10:08 /var/adm/messages.0


OK..All I want is to clear all the messages...And i wanted to start from the recent date.

I dont understand the last command..

what does this do???
Your posting commands that I dont know what there are without you explaining them is no help to me...

Maybe I'm not understanding what you are attempting to do...

If all you want to do is delete the old messages then
rm /var/adm/messages*

If you don't understand that please say so.
From your ls output it appears that you have some log rotation going so the files will regenerate over time.

man logadm

Don't think rm is the right option. That way filedescriptors will stay open to the deleted file, right?

I always just use:

> /var/adm/messages

This will clear the log and you don't need to restart anything.

Is it like this:??

> /var/adm/messages

and thats it???

what does the " > " mean?

Thats it ;)

The > puts everything in front of the > in the file. Like if you would do: echo test > /var/adm/messages it would overwrite your file with only the word test

With two > you will add text to the end of the file, for example: echo test >> /var/adm/messages would append the word test to the file.