Re: AIX 3 Hard Disk Full

From: Andreas Schulze (b79xan_at_gmx.de)
Date: 09/28/04 

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:19:27 +0200

"Lucas" <asklucas@gmx.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:21a22194.0409280600.15cc95aa@posting.google.com...
> Hi there,
>
> we're using an old RS/6000 POWER for accessing old files. In the last
> days it has been reorganizing the system every 25 minutes
> automatically, you can't use is continuously. Then there was a message
> that the hard disk is full.
>
> I checked the HD space:
> # df
> Filesystem Total KB free %used iused %iused Mounted on
> /dev/hd4 8192 5204 36% 696 33% /
> /dev/hd9var 28672 0 100% 143 1% /var
> /dev/hd2 241664 35996 85% 11560 18% /usr
> /dev/hd3 16384 13872 15% 159 3% /tmp
> /dev/hd1 1503232 465964 69% 28366 7% /home
>
> This happened already once, and we only needed to use one single
> command and the system cleared unnecessary files at /var. Which
> command is it? I didn't find any hint in the manual.
>
> Thank you for your help!
>
> Sincerely
> Lucas E. A. Petritsch
> Metallwarenfabrik PETRITSCH GmbH

Hallo Lucas,

Quite some years since I worked with AIX 3.x :-). The only built in command
which cleans up old files that comes to my mind is skulker. Usually it is
run from cron. I cannot remember whether it cleans /var under AIX 3 but even
if it doesn't as default it might have been customized to do this. However,
there are some third party tools out in the wild that do a similar job and
you might be using one of those. What all those programs I saw had in common
is that they all are shell scripts. Hence you might search for scripts.

Having said that I shall like to add that it is very likely that some log
file has been growing in /var. If that was the case you could simply reduce
its size to zero by the following command:
# cat /dev/null > /var/yourlogfile
This will work while the system is up and running.

HTH,
Andreas