shrinking available disk space osx

[heavensdaw]

Hi guys,

I've been noticing that my available disk space has been shrinking on its own without d/l any large files, or doing any major work

Well yesterday I googled the problem and found out where all this 'missing' space was going.. ( I used OmniDiskSweeper app for checking )

There seems to be a problem with the 'system log' and the 'asi log' both located in /private/var/log.

I found those two document files had sucked up over 30gb of disk space between them!

I dragged the offenders into trash, rebooted and then deleted them.

Now with over 40gb of free space I'm gonna keep an eye on this.

Can anyone give any idea why this happens and a solution to stop it continuing?

btw OSX 10.4.11

Thanks

Hd

[slirak]

I'm not sure about these particular logs, but there should be scheduled (aka cron) jobs running daily, weekly and monthly and truncating log files is one of their tasks.

As I recall it, with older OS X versions, leaving your Mac on for longer times (just putting it to sleep rather than actually turning it off completely) could prevent these scripts from running.

You can force them to run manually though.

Check this article out.

[steko]

Besides what slirak mentioned for older OS X versions, if deleting asl.log & system.logs didn't help, you should check your system.logs in Console (Applications/Utilities) for what's causing the trouble. Could be any app...

[SubFunk]

and iceclean (free app) is an easy and extremely lightweight apps to force the terminal scripts for cleaning, maintenance...

which you shouldn't need, OSX is usually taking care of that...???

but it does not sound normal, i mean OSX is space hungry (you always need at least 15% - 20% of your disk space free, otherwise it will start to choke) but the scripts that are automatically scheduled do a very god job in maintaining, since i use OSX (all versions of it) i never needed to do any manual maintenance whatsoever... it always took care of it self... (that is what i love about OSX, it's for IT dummies like me)

sounds weird.

did you mucked about in terminal at one stage? and maybe disabled the script(s)? that you can do, maybe you did it without noticing?

but to be honest i don't know how to find out if the are either enabled or disabled... maybe steko knows...

or try iceclean... as i mentioned.

[steko]

You could also use Maintidget to run the scripts & see when they last ran.

BTW on Leopard & Snow Leopard just forget about the scripts: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... 6&#8906776 - http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... 5&tstart=0

[heavensdaw]

Thanks guys for all the help.. I'll look into more

The system.log and the asi.log are constantly filling up.. maybe more when I'm online running safari and messenger.

After I delete the files they reappear in the /private/var/log folder starting off at 8kb then slowly but surely filling up????
hmmm very weird.

Hd

[steko]

Check the logs in Console… something newly installed incompatible?

After deleting the logs again:

Try a Safe Boot

You could try to reapply the 10.4.11 Combo Update:

Intel: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL172

PPC: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL170


http://discussions.apple.com/category.j ... goryID=177

http://discussions.apple.com/search.jsp ... nkBy=10001

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... ID=9980425

[slirak]

Thanks guys for all the help.. I'll look into more

The system.log and the asi.log are constantly filling up.. maybe more when I'm online running safari and messenger.

After I delete the files they reappear in the /private/var/log folder starting off at 8kb then slowly but surely filling up????
hmmm very weird.

Hd

It's not weird that they appear again, they're there for a reason. They continuously record various system and application events as they occur.

Normally, they shouldn't become large enough to be a problem though.

Part of the maintenance scripts' job is to truncate them, leaving only the newest events. If a log file grows big enough to be an issue, it's either the maintenance scripts that fail or some application that's writing loads of events to the log. In the latter case, it's usually error events.

You can open the log files with the terminal, or with OS X's text editor. This is what a techie would do to check your system's health.

Don't worry if you find hundreds or even thousands of events and don't worry if quite a few of them are error events, unless your system is unstable or if the logs grow a lot, very fast.

[heavensdaw]

i never needed to do any manual maintenance whatsoever... it always took care of it self... (that is what i love about OSX, it's for IT dummies like me)

what he said..

but I'm learning..

@ slirak thanks for the help mate... I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of the problem..

I'm running a Live session atm and when I'm done with it I'll get on the Terminal tip

There seem to be quite a few stories regarding this.. Upgrade time perhaps?

best

Hd

[SubFunk]

There seem to be quite a few stories regarding this.. Upgrade time perhaps?

SL is great, i am usually also into don't change a running system, but for 29 euros the SL upgrade is really good, just a massive HD space saver and snappy, also some of the small detail improvements i really appreciate.

10.6.3 feels really matured, runs fine here...

[trevorc]

i just upgraded from 10.4.11 to 10.6.3 and 'saved' 19gb out of 220 used - i thought i'd lost something but it's really just a lot leaner.. i don't think there's an upgrade pack from 10.4 unless you drop 170 euros on the snow leopard/ilife/iwork package though..

[steko]

@heavensdaw: no need for Terminal or text editor, just open Console & check the logs...

i just upgraded from 10.4.11 to 10.6.3 and 'saved' 19gb out of 220 used - i thought i'd lost something but it's really just a lot leaner.. i don't think there's an upgrade pack from 10.4 unless you drop 170 euros on the snow leopard/ilife/iwork package though..

You can just use the $29 retail SL upgrade disc to install over Tiger (no EULA violation): http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... ID=2272918

[heavensdaw]

@heavensdaw: no need for Terminal or text editor, just open Console & check the logs...

i just upgraded from 10.4.11 to 10.6.3 and 'saved' 19gb out of 220 used - i thought i'd lost something but it's really just a lot leaner.. i don't think there's an upgrade pack from 10.4 unless you drop 170 euros on the snow leopard/ilife/iwork package though..

You can just use the $29 retail SL upgrade disc to install over Tiger (no EULA violation): http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... ID=2272918

Life is full of little surprises!

Way to go Jo..

Hd

[slirak]

@heavensdaw: no need for Terminal or text editor, just open Console & check the logs...

Hey! I didn't realise there was a Unix style console app in OS X! Turns out, the Swedish translation is, well, not what you'd expect. Cool. And thanks for making me look for and find it!

A bit sad though, it's not the first time Apple's messed up the Swedish translation. I suppose the worst example is in Garage Band 09, where the sheet music feature is labelled "Filmmusik", which is "movie soundtrack" in Swedish...

[heavensdaw]

Well on looking at Console, at both asi.log and system.log. I can honestly say that I haven't got the slightest clue at what it's trying to tell me..

Swedish? English? more like double dutch!

Hd