/var getting full

/var/lib/slocate/slocate.db is used by the locate command. locate lets you search for files without making the operating system examine each and every file (which the find command does, and it can be very slow). Instead, it searches a database that is maintained by the updatedb command. Deleting slocate.db will break the locate command, but it will not affect anything else.

If you want the locate command to work, you can regenerate the database using these commands:

Code:

# touch /var/lib/slocate/slocate.db
# updatedb

It may take some time for the updatedb command to finish, depending on the size of the filesystems, how many files are on them, and how deep subdirectories are nested.

 

What size is the drive or partition for "/var"? I ask because you may need to consider using a larger drive and or larger partition size when considering future growth and accounting for the natural increase of data being stored.

Use the following commands as an example to obtain the disk usage for directories within the path "/var":

Code:

# du -ax --max-depth 1 /var | sort -n | tail
# du -ax --max-depth 1 /var/lib | sort -n | tail
# du -ax --max-depth 1 /var/log | sort -n | tail

To show the disk usage in a human-readable format then you may also try the following examples (that will report files with sizes in Megabytes or Gigabytes, excluding files with sizes in Kilobytes):

Code:

# du -ahx --max-depth 1 /var | sort -k2 | egrep "[0-9](M|G)"
# du -ahx --max-depth 1 /var/lib | sort -k2 | egrep "[0-9](M|G)"
# du -ahx --max-depth 1 /var/log | sort -k2 | egrep "[0-9](M|G)"

Using the disk usage information obtained you may consider whether or not to remove certain files; extreme caution should be practiced to ensure that required files are retained and not inadvertently deleted.

I would also consider ensuring that your logrotate configuration has compression enabled, as seen by the following command and desired output:

Code:

# egrep "compress$" /etc/logrotate.conf
compress

If the directive "compress" is commented, that is, with an extra character in front of the directive to disable it, then you will want to edit the logrotate configuration file (at a path of "/etc/logrotate.conf") to remove the extra character.

Code:

# uncomment this if you want your log files compressed
#compress

You may also edit the same configuration file ("/etc/logrotate.conf") to reduce the number of older logs that are archived:

Code:

# keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs
rotate 4

 

I cannot recommend removing just any file purely to reduce disk usage.

What I do recommend is to thoroughly inspect what is consuming the most disk usage and then carefully evaluate how the data should be handled by your Systems Administrations personnel.

 

This post by cPanelKenneth should prove helpful I think: /var/cpanel/bandwidth folder size