We have SCO Unix (realease 5.0.5b),

Please advise which files can be safely deleted on the system root folder / to create space? These are mainly spool/message/history etc log files. Where they located and can they be deleted using rm?

The server has been operational for the past 4 years.

Thanks.

Truncate the following files:
/usr/adm/messages
/usr/adm/syslog
/usr/spool/lp/logs/requests
/usr/spool/mail/root
/usr/spool/mail/cron

Do this by:
cat >file <cr>
<ctrl-d><cr>


remove all of the following:
core

Run the following from /
du -a |sort -r -n >/u/file.list

The output of this is a list of the files and directories on the entire system sorted in descending order by size. Using this you should be able to find files that you didn't know existed (inadvertently saved in the wrong directory), and which files are growing (have a recent file date).

Thanks jgt.

I didnt quite understand the cat. Please give example like on /usr/adm/messages or /usr/adm/syslog.

Regards.

do the following as root

#cd /usr/adm
#cat > messages
type a <ctrl-d> followed by a carriage return
#
the effect of this is to create a file called messages with the same attributes as the original, but with a size of zero bytes.
The MS-DOS version of this is:
c:>copy con messages
<ctrl-z>
c:>

Thanks jgt your a star.

The /usr/spool/mail/root was huge.

Using du -s * in /var:-
size before cat - 62224 and after - 59510

But I couldn't find /usr/spool/mail/cron??

On monitoring seems like the /var/opt & /var/spool folders are growing.

Are there any other files I can truncate/delete within these? What about the /tmp folder can I rm ALL files/folders in it??

Can cat be done on a link or do I have to go to actual folder/file to execute (scared to experiment)?

Regards...

/var/spool is a link of /usr/spool, email and print files are all temporarily stored below this directory.

/var/opt is the location of the operating system files, /usr/bin /bin /etc are all links to something within /var/opt.

You should, by definition, be able to delete all the files in /tmp, and, in fact, in SCO 6.0.0 and Unixware, /tmp can be a ramdrive...but, I would make a copy of it, say "tar ctvf /u/tmp.tar /tmp" before deleting it the first time.

There are hard links, and soft(symbolic) links. There is no way to tell which is the original and which is the link with a hard link, so deleting one will delete both.
With soft links, the original file will still exist if the link (newer file) is deleted. See "man ln".

It doesn't matter which file name you use to truncate the file.

/usr/spool/mail/cron will only exist if you have cron jobs (typically scheduled overnight batch jobs) running.

If you are using mail on this system, you should move all the contents of /usr/spool/mail to /u/spool/mail, and then edit /usr/mmdf/mmdftailor and change the location of the spool files accordingly. Doing this will prevent someone from filling the root file system with email messages.

Hi,
1. Can I safely cat wtmp, utmp, wtmpx, utmpx & lastlog without causing any log-in/system problems as these files are growing?

2. My tmp is filling up only over week-end (Sunday). I have been monitoring durring the week and /tmp/ does not change in size; its only on Sunday.
The HUGE file being created is CroutSHBa0004R. This contains lines :-
var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/5.0.5Eb/etc/default/filesys does not exit
var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/5.0.5Eb/etc/default/format does not exit
var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/5.0.5Eb/etc/default/goodpw does not exit
var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/5.0.5Eb/etc/default/login does not exit
etc
etc
etc

I don't understand as these files do exist.

Looking into the crontab file, the jobs that run on Sunday are:-

17 5 * * 0 /etc/cleanup > /dev/null
0 2 * * 0,4 /usr/lib/cron/logchecker
0 4 * * 0 /etc/custom -V syslinks;# CUSTOM_SYMLINK_REPORT

Thanks