I have a brand new installation of mandrake 10. /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog are both at 350 MB and growing. They are too big for me to open in anything to see what is giong on.

How can I delete the contents so the logging will start over? Any thing else I can do?

the short answer is, yes, you can (& should) periodically delete log files if you no longer need them for reference, lest they grow to enormous sizes. (as you're finding out) 2 other methods to control unwieldy log files are to set up a cron job to overwrite log files at set intervals instead of appending to them infinitely. (see man cron for details on how to use cron) or, if you wanna live on the edge, you can simply turn off logging by going to MCC (Mandrake Control Center->system->drakxservices-> & turn off the syslog & stop it from running at boot time. that's what i do after i know an install is running smoothly & set up the way i like it, but as i said, it's not the safest method should you ever need to reference a log file to bail you out of a jam. if you use mehtod 1 & delete the files, they will be rebuilt automatically.

otis