UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Help!

Our mail server has 100% disk utilisation. I don't know much about linux but I need to delete something pronto. I only have to keep this thing ticking over until it is replaced by an exchange server in a few weeks, but the phone is constantly ringing with people telling me they can't send or receive, which I already know!

I don't know what I can and can't delete safely, log files I guess. I've had a rummage around and can't find anything that stands out. It's red hat 5.1 if that makes any difference.

Thanks!

getting rid of the log files probably would help, if they are of a large size, however in some cases you cant just delete them, because the program writing to the log file will look for the log file to be a certain size, and if its not it will just write garbage data to fill it up to the size it was. search on google for log file removal, also try searching on red hats website for help. since its just a mail server (?) make sure to remove any packages that arent being used. get rid of X and any gui utils, again, if this is just an mail server, get rid of httpd.. im sure others will have more suggestions for you. good luck.

the earlier post is right

try find / -size +10000

I often look for files that were written to recently...

find / -mtime -3 -print

Since this is a mailserver, I would look at the mailboxes. There may be a user who was mailbombed or spammed or innocently mailed an encyclopedia or something.

Thanks for the replies. I discovered the machine only has a 1.5GB drive and just the accumalation of unread emails etc from approx 600 accounts has filled it up to capacity. I have deleted some old accounts which has freed up 5% of space which should keep it going for a while.

I did't realise the disk was that small. How easy is it to add another one on such an old OS? And I how would I tell it to start using the new disk. At the moment all mail sits in the users' home directories, so I would somehow need to split the /home/ directory over 2 disks?

Oh, it also uses Apache to run a webmail front end.

im not too familiar with combining hard drives, but search on google for LVM.

ealier posts indicate that the os is redhat 5.1 and i think ... only aix, hpux ofters LVM readily.... SUN uses ufs by default but they have their own volume management... (if i am right...)