Request for explanation of error message

[Mike Marchywka]

On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 03:22:06PM -0400, Paul Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 2019-07-29 at 02:51 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> > Whatever is happeing, I now have
> > 
> > "
> > bret at bret-MD34045-2521:~$ ls -l /var/log/lightdm/x*.*
> > -rw------- 1 root root 64086904832 Jul 29 02:49 /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log
> > "
> > 
> > and no space left on the / partition.
> > 
> > So, whatever is happening, the file, as it stands, has to be deleted,
> > as it has rendered the system unusable.
> 
> I haven't been following this thread, but I mean, have you looked at
> the contents of that file to see what it says?
> 
> You can view the last 20 lines, for example, by opening a terminal
> window and running:
> 
>   tail -n20 /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log
> 
> It could be that it's spewing errors or warnings to that file, which
> could lead you to a poorly-behaving program on your system or warn you
> about some hardware or configuration issue.
> 
> I don't use lightdm (I use standard gdm) so I can't say for sure but
> it's possible simply deleting that file won't solve your disk space
> problem: if lightdm keeps the file open to write to it then removing it
> via "sudo rm -f /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log" won't actually free the disk
> space: on POSIX systems disk space is only cleaned up when there are no
> more references to the file.  If you try to delete it and you're still
> out of space you'll have to at least log out and log back in to restart
> the display manager, and/or possibly kill the process.

 I keep suggesting to find an entire loop to post- he posted last
few lines before but it may help to get an entire period or go back
to first logfile that seemed too big and start there too.
Although deleting it and catching the new one starting to fill
may be easier. One of problems was inability to get a /tmp/x-lock or
something similar that may have simple explanation. 


That is a good point though- I remember with the nullmailer problem
I had to do something like a service restart but yeah you should be able
to see it with "lsof | grep filename " although fixing the problem
may require more drastic action anyway or at least a restart to
change a configuration.



> 
> In general those log files are for your information, for helping to
> track down issues.  The system itself doesn't need them for proper
> operation so if you need to delete them you should feel free to do so. 
> It won't break anything.
> 
> 
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-- 

mike marchywka
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canton GA 30115
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marchywka at hotmail.com
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