Part of the job of cleaning up heavily loaded file systems involves locating and removing files that have not been used recently. You can locate unused files by using the ls or find commands. For more information, see the ls ( 1 ) and find ( 1 ) man pages.
Other ways to conserve disk space include emptying temporary directories
such as the directories located in /var/tmp or /var/spool, and deleting core and crash dump files.
For more information about crash dump files, refer to Chapter 24, Managing System Crash Information (Tasks).
How to List the Newest Files
Example 13.10. Listing the Newest Files
The following example shows how to use the ls -tl command
to locate the most recently created or changed files within the /var/adm directory. The sulog file was created or
edited most recently.
$ ls -tl /var/adm
total 134
-rw------- 1 root root 315 Sep 24 14:00 sulog
-r--r--r-- 1 root other 350700 Sep 22 11:04 lastlog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root bin 4464 Sep 22 11:04 utmpx
-rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 20088 Sep 22 11:04 wtmpx
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Sep 19 03:10 messages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 0 Sep 12 03:10 messages.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11510 Sep 10 16:13 messages.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 10 16:12 vold.log
drwxr-xr-x 2 root sys 512 Sep 10 15:33 sm.bin
drwxrwxr-x 5 adm adm 512 Sep 10 15:19 acct
drwxrwxr-x 2 adm sys 512 Sep 10 15:19 sa
-rw------- 1 uucp bin 0 Sep 10 15:17 aculog
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root bin 0 Sep 10 15:17 spellhist
drwxr-xr-x 2 adm adm 512 Sep 10 15:17 log
drwxr-xr-x 2 adm adm 512 Sep 10 15:17 passwd
How to Find and Remove Old or Inactive Files
Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.
Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services .
Find files that have not been accessed for a specified number of days and list them in a file.
#finddirectory-type f[-atime +nnn] [-mtime +nnn]-print >filename&
directory
Identifies the directory you want to search. Directories below this directory are also searched.
atime +
nnn
Finds files that have not been accessed within the number of days (nnn) that you specify.
mtime +
nnn
Finds files that have not been modified within the number of days (nnn) that you specify.
filename
Identifies the file that contains the list of inactive files.
Remove the inactive files found listed in the previous step.
#rm `catfilename`
where filename identifies the file that was
created in the previous step. This file contains the list of inactive files.
Example 13.11. Finding and Removing Old or Inactive Files
The following example shows files in the /var/adm directory
and the subdirectories that have not been accessed in the last 60 days. The /var/tmp/deadfiles file contains the list of inactive files. The rm command removes these inactive files.
#find /var/adm -type f -atime +60 -print > /var/tmp/deadfiles &#more /var/tmp/deadfiles/var/adm/aculog /var/adm/spellhist /var/adm/wtmpx /var/adm/sa/sa13 /var/adm/sa/sa27 /var/adm/sa/sa11 /var/adm/sa/sa23 /var/adm/sulog /var/adm/vold.log /var/adm/messages.1 /var/adm/messages.2 /var/adm/messages.3 #rm `cat /var/tmp/deadfiles`#
How to Clear Out Temporary Directories
Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.
Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services .
Change to the directory that you want to clean out.
#cddirectory
Ensure that you are in the correct directory before completing Step 3. Step 3 deletes all files in the current directory.
Delete the files and subdirectories in the current directory.
# rm -r *
Change to other directories that contain unnecessary, temporary or obsolete subdirectories and files. Delete these subdirectories and files by repeating Step 3.
How to Find and Delete core Files
Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.
Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services .
Change to the directory where you want
to search for core files.
Find and remove any core files in this directory
and its subdirectories.
# find . -name core -exec rm {} \;
How to Delete Crash Dump Files
Crash dump files can be very large. If you have enabled your system to store these files, do not retain them for longer than necessary.
Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.
Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services .
Change to the directory where crash dump files are stored.
#cd /var/crash/system
where system identifies a system that created
the crash dump files.
Ensure you are in the correct directory before completing Step 3. Step 3 deletes all files in the current directory.
Remove the crash dump files.
# rm *
Verify that the crash dump files were removed.
# ls