Really, really, really big log file

[Redwolf]

I got a *small* problem, see if you can identify it:

bash-2.05b$ ls -l /var/log
total 4281880
-rw-r--r--    1 root     users       26574 Apr 19 16:29 XFree86.0.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     users       35526 Apr 17 00:32 XFree86.0.log.old
-rw-r--r--    1 root     users       26425 May 15 12:35 Xorg.0.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     users       26425 May 15 12:35 Xorg.0.log.old
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Apr 19 20:30 apache2
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Mar  2 16:39 cups
-rw-rw----    1 portage  portage    370528 May 15 12:24 emerge.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       134901 Feb 27 09:21 genkernel.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       292584 May 15 12:06 lastlog
-rw-------    1 root     root     4378940344 May 15 12:40 messages
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Sep 10  2003 news
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         4235 May  8 18:55 nvidia-installer.log
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Mar  1 21:59 samba
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       161146 May 15 12:23 scrollkeeper.log
-rw-rw-r--    1 root     utmp       554112 May 15 12:43 wtmp
bash-2.05b$

If you said "Why is the messages file 4.1 GB big?!?!" then you have won the prize! Apparently, my logger logs all my emerge operations too. Not good. Any way to limit the size of this file? I'm gonna try deleting it in a bit.

[thronka]

Looks like your mailbox file. Have you tried opening the file to see the contents?

[Redwolf]

Yeah I tried. It crashed gedit. I wasn;t about to 'less' it either, since that caches the file it tries to show.

I don't use e-mail on Linux (yet), so it can't be that.

[lynchmob]

You can run tail to see whats recent and maybe check to see if the logrotate script is in /etc/cron.daily.

[thronka]

you can be running logwatch and it writes everyday to that file. just login as root and type mail and read the messages.. how many do you have?

[Epyon9283]

/var/log/messages has nothing to do with mail.

look through it and see whats writing to the log so much. I'd also consider using logrotate to keep the size down.

[krohnjw]

Yeah redwolf, just tail it for the last few lines, then add it into log rotate.

If you have /var/log on a separate partition you can set a quota on the partition, but that would not limit that file, just the total partition size. Logrotate would at least keep the logs recent, and hopefully of decent size.