[LBo] /var/log directory

[Howard Rosen]

Jim,

Thanks for your input.  I am a retired person now, but I was an
electronics engineer when I worked.  And as such I tend to know that
what you don't know can and will hurt you, so I'm not about to delete
anything until I'm sure about it.  I am running opensuse10.1, and it has
been pretty good and I bet that it takes care of lots of things on its
own.

Howard

On Mon, 2006-10-23 at 09:51 -0500, Jim Westbrook wrote:
> Howard, unless you are absolutely sure of what you're doing, leave 
> everything in /var/log in place.  In most cases, if you delete a 
> necessary logfile it will be create anew as needed.  However, the 
> previous contents are no longer available for your edification.
> 
> SuSE, and I'm sure other distros, provides for a periodic archiving of 
> the /var/log/messages file.  The older archives can be deleted once you 
> are confident that you do not need the info therein.  My personal 
> practice is the retain the current messages file and the most recent 
> archive file (usually about a month's content) manually deleting the 
> older archives (must be root to do so).
> 
> JimW
> 
> Howard Rosen wrote:
> 
> >Recently Stefan referred to messages stored in /var/log.  I just checked
> >my /var/log directory and here is what I found:
> >
> >Number of Lines
> >hrosen70 at linux:~> cd /var/log
> >hrosen70 at linux:/var/log> ll | wc -l
> ><...snip...>
> >60
> >
> >Number of Characters
> >hrosen70 at linux:/var/log> ll | wc -m
> ><...snip...>
> >4112
> >hrosen70 at linux:/var/log>
> >
> >I'd like to reduce this directory to a smaller amount, but I am not
> >familiar with the contents and, of course, do not want to loose anything
> >vital.  Any thoughts anyone?
> >
> >Thanks in advance,
> >
> >Howard
> > 
> >
> >  
> >