/var is getting full

[Amedee Van Gasse (on Ubuntu mailing lists)]

On Sat, October 10, 2009 11:10, Richard Gliebe wrote:
> On 10/10/09 10:50 AM Graham Watkins wrote:
>> Didar Hossain wrote:
>>> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Graham Watkins
>>> <shellycat.gw at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi folks,
>>>>
>>>> The other day when installing some updates, I got a warning message
>>>> saying that /var was too full.
>>>>
>>>> I checked using df and found it was 94% used.  (The partition is
>>>> 4.2Gb.)  This certainly seems a lot.  My 9.04 installation is just
>>>> over
>>>> a month old so I'm surprised it's got full so quickly.
>>>>
>>>> What's the best (safest) way of slimming it down?
>>>>
>>> I wonder if "apt-get clean" help?
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Didar
>>>
>>>
>> Thanks for the reply.  Been there, done that. Still 94% used though.
>
> whats about a reboot, maybe some locked Inodes become free.

Oh come on people, you're just doing shotgun debugging without knowing
what is eating his disk space. It is all with good intentions but you're
not helping him this way.

If someone is saying that a high-level directory like /var is getting
full, your immediate response should be to ask more detail. du (disk
usage) is the tool he needs. ncdu is also good, or some GUI program that
does the same.

-- 
Amedee