Is it safe to just remove files from /var/cache on a running system, or is there a correct procedure for doing that?
Mine has hit over 3 gigs, making it one of the larger directories in /, which is running low on space. I've hit all the low-hanging fruit I can find and now I come to things like /var/cache, and I don't know what to do about such.
Thanks in advance!
Fred
The FHS specification says that applications using /var/cache should expect those data to disappear anytime, so under a strict interpretation it should be safe to remove everything. Practically, though, I don't know that I'd trust every application to adhere to that, so it might be worth looking at what applications are the biggest users of the directory and making targeted deletions or even application-specific tools to remove the data (i.e. "yum clean all").
On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 06:20:15PM -0500, Fred wrote:
Is it safe to just remove files from /var/cache on a running system, or is there a correct procedure for doing that?
Mine has hit over 3 gigs, making it one of the larger directories in /, which is running low on space. I've hit all the low-hanging fruit I can find and now I come to things like /var/cache, and I don't know what to do about such.
Thanks in advance!
On Thu, 2021-12-30 at 16:09 -0800, Skylar Thompson wrote:
The FHS specification says that applications using /var/cache should expect those data to disappear anytime, so under a strict interpretation it should be safe to remove everything. Practically, though, I don't know that I'd trust every application to adhere to that, so it might be worth looking at what applications are the biggest users of the directory and making targeted deletions or even application-specific tools to remove the data (i.e. "yum clean all").
On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 06:20:15PM -0500, Fred wrote:
Is it safe to just remove files from /var/cache on a running system, or is there a correct procedure for doing that?
Mine has hit over 3 gigs, making it one of the larger directories in /, which is running low on space. I've hit all the low-hanging fruit I can find and now I come to things like /var/cache, and I don't know what to do about such.
Thanks in advance!
It almost always filled up with leftover cruft from yum... Run "yum clean all" should clear up a large chunk of your space.
Jim --
--On Thursday, December 30, 2021 6:20 PM -0500 Fred fred.fredex@gmail.com wrote:
Mine has hit over 3 gigs, making it one of the larger directories in /, which is running low on space. I've hit all the low-hanging fruit I can find and now I come to things like /var/cache, and I don't know what to do about such.
Have you run KDirStat to find the disk pigs? I regularly use its Windows derivative, WinDirStat.
http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/ https://windirstat.net/
I wish there was a web-based version for headless servers without X libraries.
On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 18:21, Fred fred.fredex@gmail.com wrote:
Is it safe to just remove files from /var/cache on a running system, or is there a correct procedure for doing that?
Mine has hit over 3 gigs, making it one of the larger directories in /, which is running low on space. I've hit all the low-hanging fruit I can find and now I come to things like /var/cache, and I don't know what to do about such.
The first step is to find out what is using it. It is probably dnf but could be other utilities which are trying and failing to do something. I start off with
``` $ sudo -i # cd /var/cache # du -sch | sort -h 0 ./PackageKit 0 ./app-info 0 ./bpf 0 ./fwupd 0 ./httpd 0 ./krb5rcache 0 ./libX11 0 ./libvirt 0 ./private 0 ./realmd 36K ./ldconfig 1.7M ./man 29M ./dnf 31M total
while on a different system: 4.0K ./abrt-di 4.0K ./bpf 4.0K ./foomatic 4.0K ./krb5rcache 4.0K ./private 4.0K ./realmd 8.0K ./httpd 8.0K ./libX11 8.0K ./powertop 96K ./ldconfig 300K ./ibus 520K ./libvirt 3.5M ./man 4.2M ./fwupd 38M ./app-info 59M ./cups 213M ./PackageKit 332M ./dnf 2.1G ./mock 2.7G total
```
As others have noted, dnf is probably the most used tool here, but it could be mock or some other utility (I had cups because I misconfigured something once)
dnf is a tricky tool because sometimes a command will create a 'not-so-temporary' cached tree which can't be cleaned because `dnf clean all` doesn't know it. What I do is a `dnf clean all` and then go into /var/cache/dnf and see what else might be still there. In my case I found a large trove of packages from when I had enabled testing at one point and then turned it off before doing a clean. I normally just delete all the directories and do a `dnf update` to see if it reports errors.
Hope this helps.
Thanks in advance!
Fred _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
well, I removed all the files in the tree under /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7 but left all the directories empty. that got rid of a couple gigs of stuff.
among the remains, the only other big one remaining is:
2.3G abrt-di
which I won't mess with for now.
I've got 4.2G free, now, so that should run me for quite a while.
Thanks to all of you for your tips!
Fred
On Fri, Dec 31, 2021 at 10:38 AM Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 18:21, Fred fred.fredex@gmail.com wrote:
Is it safe to just remove files from /var/cache on a running system, or
is
there a correct procedure for doing that?
Mine has hit over 3 gigs, making it one of the larger directories in /, which is running low on space. I've hit all the low-hanging fruit I can find and now I come to things like /var/cache, and I don't know what to
do
about such.
The first step is to find out what is using it. It is probably dnf but could be other utilities which are trying and failing to do something. I start off with
$ sudo -i # cd /var/cache # du -sch | sort -h 0 ./PackageKit 0 ./app-info 0 ./bpf 0 ./fwupd 0 ./httpd 0 ./krb5rcache 0 ./libX11 0 ./libvirt 0 ./private 0 ./realmd 36K ./ldconfig 1.7M ./man 29M ./dnf 31M total while on a different system: 4.0K ./abrt-di 4.0K ./bpf 4.0K ./foomatic 4.0K ./krb5rcache 4.0K ./private 4.0K ./realmd 8.0K ./httpd 8.0K ./libX11 8.0K ./powertop 96K ./ldconfig 300K ./ibus 520K ./libvirt 3.5M ./man 4.2M ./fwupd 38M ./app-info 59M ./cups 213M ./PackageKit 332M ./dnf 2.1G ./mock 2.7G totalAs others have noted, dnf is probably the most used tool here, but it could be mock or some other utility (I had cups because I misconfigured something once)
dnf is a tricky tool because sometimes a command will create a 'not-so-temporary' cached tree which can't be cleaned because `dnf clean all` doesn't know it. What I do is a `dnf clean all` and then go into /var/cache/dnf and see what else might be still there. In my case I found a large trove of packages from when I had enabled testing at one point and then turned it off before doing a clean. I normally just delete all the directories and do a `dnf update` to see if it reports errors.
Hope this helps.
Thanks in advance!
Fred _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-- Stephen J Smoogen. Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle. -- Ian MacClaren _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
--On Friday, December 31, 2021 11:15 PM -0500 Fred fred.fredex@gmail.com wrote:
among the remains, the only other big one remaining is:
2.3G abrt-di
which I won't mess with for now.
That directory is owned by the abrt-addon-ccpp package, which is involved with crash dump analysis. So I'd guess it's full of dumps from programs that crashed.
On 12/31/21 22:15, Fred wrote:
well, I removed all the files in the tree under /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7 but left all the directories empty. that got rid of a couple gigs of stuff.
among the remains, the only other big one remaining is:
2.3G abrt-di
which I won't mess with for now.
I've got 4.2G free, now, so that should run me for quite a while.
Thanks to all of you for your tips!
Fred
For the record .. I remove things manually from /var/cache/yum/ all the time (or /var/cache/dnf/ ). It has never caused me any issues.
I have not removed anything else manually from /var/cache/
<snip>
On 1/4/22 1:22 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 12/31/21 22:15, Fred wrote:
well, I removed all the files in the tree under /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7 but left all the directories empty. that got rid of a couple gigs of stuff.
among the remains, the only other big one remaining is:
2.3G abrt-di
which I won't mess with for now.
I've got 4.2G free, now, so that should run me for quite a while.
Thanks to all of you for your tips!
Fred
For the record .. I remove things manually from /var/cache/yum/ all the time (or /var/cache/dnf/ ). It has never caused me any issues.
I have not removed anything else manually from /var/cache/
+1
Valeri
<snip> _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
I regularly run "yum clean all" as yum tends to cache lots of stuff which isn't really necessary once you have done your patching.
Michael Lightfoot Delivery Engineer Sliced Tech Canberra, Australia
-----Original Message----- From: CentOS centos-bounces@centos.org On Behalf Of Valeri Galtsev Sent: Wednesday, 5 January 2022 5:42 AM To: centos@centos.org Subject: Re: [CentOS] how to clear out /var/cache?
On 1/4/22 1:22 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 12/31/21 22:15, Fred wrote:
well, I removed all the files in the tree under /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7 but left all the directories empty. that got rid of a couple gigs of stuff.
among the remains, the only other big one remaining is:
2.3G abrt-di
which I won't mess with for now.
I've got 4.2G free, now, so that should run me for quite a while.
Thanks to all of you for your tips!
Fred
For the record .. I remove things manually from /var/cache/yum/ all the time (or /var/cache/dnf/ ). It has never caused me any issues.
I have not removed anything else manually from /var/cache/
+1
Valeri
<snip> _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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Johnny Hughes -
Kenneth Porter -
Michael Lightfoot -
Skylar Thompson -
Stephen John Smoogen -
Valeri Galtsev