2.4GB txt files in /var/log? Safe to delete?

[fictivetoast]

UPDATE : NOW URGENT, 0 space left on root partition...

On Intrebid, ever since the beta, I've noticed my free space on the root partition disappearing bizarrely quickly - I've got about 10 gigs for the root partition, and I've never even approached using half of that for system files in the past. I've been seeing "0 bytes free" recently though, which initially sent me scrambling to clean up old packages before finally checking the Disk Usage Analyzer, and WHOA.

If, assuming its name structure properly implies that it contains log files, why on earth would my /var/log folder be holding 7.1GBs??? And even more weirdly, why would the vast majority of that be distributed in three text files exceeding 2 gigs each??? The top six offenders are :


syslog.0 (plain text document) 2.4 GB
kern.log.0 (plain text document) 2.4 GB
messages.0 (plain text document) 2.2 GB
kern.log.2.gz (Gzip archive) 73.4 MB
syslog6.gz (Gzip archive) 73.3 MB
messages.2.gz (Gzip archive) 66.9 MB


Can I immediately delete this stuff? When I run out of space entirely (it's happened before), I run into errors opening/writing to permission files, and I don't want to deal with that. So if I can delete them immediately, I want to do so before I begin to investigate where they're coming from in the first place.

[fictivetoast]

HELP! Already too late - the space has already been eaten somehow, and whether I'm adding, removing, or just updating with apt-get I'm handed a bunch of errors about processing triggers in mandb without space on the device :

...
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libxml2 libxml2-utils python-libxml2
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1197kB of archives.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main libxml2 2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1 [863kB]
Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main libxml2-utils 2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1 [37.3kB]
Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main python-libxml2 2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1 [296kB]
Fetched 1197kB in 2s (568kB/s)   
(Reading database ... 119725 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libxml2 2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1 (using .../libxml2_2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libxml2 ...
Preparing to replace libxml2-utils 2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1 (using .../libxml2-utils_2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libxml2-utils ...
Preparing to replace python-libxml2 2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1 (using .../python-libxml2_2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement python-libxml2 ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/id/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/ru/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/pl.ISO8859-2/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/hu/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/fr.UTF-8/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/vi/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/de/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/pt_BR/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/fr/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/es/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/it/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/zh_TW/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/pt/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/ja/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/pl/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/tr/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/cs/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/fr.ISO8859-1/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/pl.UTF-8/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/pa/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/sv/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/it.ISO8859-1/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/it.UTF-8/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/nl/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/gl/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/ko/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/zh_CN/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/fi/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't create index cache /var/cache/man/oldlocal/12197: No space left on device
/usr/bin/mandb: can't create index cache /var/cache/man/local/12197: No space left on device
Processing triggers for python-support ...
Setting up libxml2 (2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1) ...

Setting up libxml2-utils (2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1) ...
Setting up python-libxml2 (2.6.32.dfsg-4ubuntu1.1) ...

Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Processing triggers for python-support ...

I sincerely hope this hasn't left the work that apt-get did all scrambled... anyone? Immediate help would be greatly appreciated.

[Marius Derekus]

If i am correct you can delete them, this link sys if they are older than a few days old, there useless now. Here's the link if you want to read it yourself, but i'd say delete 'em

http://www.clickopedia.com/safelydelete.php

[fictivetoast]

They've all been edited within the past hour...

[deadowl]

Don't worry about them being updated in the past hour. If you delete them and the file isn't there to write into, the system will just create a replacement file and start fresh.

It's kind of like if you delete your .mozilla folder. All of your Firefox settings will be gone, but Firefox will reconstruct the .mozilla folder the next time you run it.

[Marius Derekus]

That above link is useless, it is for windows, please forgive me for the bad post. I'll keep looking though.

[Marius Derekus]

check out this link http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=232551

Of course they did say OLD

[Marius Derekus]

here is another link http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=552857

I think it is safe for this reason, log files are meant for th user to read, if you aren't going to ever need to read these, then just delete them. (i'd delete them for the fact that you'll never read them because you can't do any thing while their there.)

[deadowl]

Yes, it's safe to delete them already!!!
It's just a file that's constantly being written to, and one which no program relies on to operate.

[Marius Derekus]

Sorry deadowl, I didn't see your post above (the first one) thanx for the help. Its really appreciated.