SillyDog701

[trevor2005]

Hello there, I have a problem with 'disk full' warnings can anyone help?

I have a PowerMac G4 running OS X 10.3.9 with an internal hard disk of 20GB. I recently have been getting 'Disk Full' warnings coming up and the computer thinks I have around 1GB available, but when I physically go round and add up the GB used I think it is only around 6.5GB used up. I did run Terminal and put in some code (which I have now forgotten it did have 'sudo' something in it?) which indicated where the space was being used up and it did show 11GB in '/private'?

What is this? Where is it? Can I delete anything in it to free up space?

Any help on this matter would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Trevor

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.23; Mac_PowerPC)

[Antony]

You might want to try Cocktail to clean your systems and other permission fixing tasks.

I guess you can delete some contents from [tt]/private[/tt], however I am not holding responsibilities. Try deleting the ones that are old if you really want to manually deleting them.

Use Cocktail first.

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[trevor2005]

Anthony

Thank you for the reply, appreciate it.

I will try Cocktail although i have been using my Disk Utility program and also Norton to fix things.

What are the files/data in /private? Why does the comuter put stuff in there and so much of it?

Cheers

Trevor

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/312.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312

[Antony]

I will try Cocktail although i have been using my Disk Utility program and also Norton to fix things.

Cocktail does more of the UNIX level of maintaining the system running smoothly.

What are the files/data in /private? Why does the comuter put stuff in there and so much of it?

I can only guess it's a location to store settings for some background application running and/or FreeBSD system running.

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[trevor2005]

Anthony

Thank you for your help, not sure i understand all you write but I do appreciate your help. I downloaded and run Cocktail and it did all kinds of wonderful stuff (I think) but sadly not got any more space back.

As I think I only have about 6.4GB used upout of 20GB total hard drive I don't know what else I can remove? The omputer obviously thinks there is 17+GB used up but god knows how to remove the 11GB or so in /private place.

I wish I understood computers better!

Cheers

Trevor

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[Antony]

Trevor,
Are you sure your [tt]/private[/tt] is 11GB? Mine is 1.1GB.

Did you use [tt]du -k /private[/tt] (in 1024-byte blocks) and do the counting? If so you can try [tt]du -h /private[/tt] (in human readable format)

As I think I only have about 6.4GB used upout of 20GB total hard drive I don't know what else I can remove? The omputer obviously thinks there is 17+GB used up but god knows how to remove the 11GB or so in /private place.

After a quick search,
I don't think you can remove files from [tt]/private[/tt]

In OS X certain root level directories are actually symbolic links (similar to aliases) to directories in /private. Examples are /cores, /etc, and /var which are respectively linked to /private/cores, /private/etc, and /private/var. /private also contains a directory of drivers for certain peripherals.

(from: http://www.westwind.com/reference/OS-X/invisibles.html )

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[trevor2005]

Anthony

Really great you reply, not sure I understand everything (not being that much of an IT person)

Well I am sure it was 11GB but may be wrong, trouble is I don't remember the bit of code I put into my Terminal program (I copied it from a website) I know it had the term 'sudo' in it. Terminal then displayed all the files (hidden one too) and what size they were which is where I saw 11GB in /private (I think?)

Cheers
Trevor

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[Antony]

Okay, try this command in terminal:

Code: Select all

du -h /private

you will see the first column is the folder size.
you might need to scroll up a few pages. Some folders are safe to delete e.g. [tt]TemporaryItems[/tt].
for example in my case:
[tt]4.0K /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/viewer/Components
2.3M /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/viewer
0B /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/Virtual PC Print Spool
2.5M /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems[/tt]
Say I want to delete [tt]viewer[/tt] (folder) and everything under it,
I would use
[tt]rm -r /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/viewer/[/tt]
OR
[tt]rm -r TemporaryItems/viewer/[/tt]
(if I am in the /private/var/tmp/folders.501/ folder)

NOTE: [tt]rm -r[/tt] is a very dangerous command for beginners, it will delete the folder and the files under it. Use it with caution.
(I like [tt]rm -r[/tt] command because I am lazy.)

Useful command:
[tt]pwd[/tt] to find out your current working directory (folder).

Note if the commands do not work, try add [tt]sudo[/tt] in front, e.g. [tt]sudo du -h /private[/tt]

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[trevor2005]

Anthony

Thank you for the message and that bit of code it worked, appreciate it.

I was correct it is 12GB in my /private and it appears to be here
/private/var/spool/cups/tmp

What is this and can I delete it? Is it to do with my priniting, I do have installed a RIP software (iProofX)

Cheers again

Trevor

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/312.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312

[Antony]

I was correct it is 12GB in my /private and it appears to be here
/private/var/spool/cups/tmp

What is this and can I delete it? Is it to do with my priniting, I do have installed a RIP software (iProofX)

Trevor,

Try the Mac way first.
System Preferences > Print & Fax, then select each printer then click "Print Queue..."
In the new Print window, delete all printing queues and/or any "cancelled jobs".
(check all your printers)

If this does not help, check what files are in that folder first.
[tt]sudo ls -l /private/var/spool/cups/tmp[/tt]

Then delete those files through terminal.
[tt]sudo rm /private/var/spool/cups/tmp/*.*[/tt] (deleting all files under [tt]/private/var/spool/cups/tmp[/tt])

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[trevor2005]

Anthony

You are a star, I resolved my problem with some of your help and that of a friend. My Disk Full problems were in the CUPs printing part–appears to be a problem many Mac people have. I put in sudo rm -rf /var/spool/cups/tmp/ and removed that 12GB.

However, I was then not able to print anything and with help found out I needed to create a replacement tmp folder in my cups, (this was complex, for me at least):
open NetInfo Manager (applications-Utilities)
unlock it and give admin name and password
choose Security-Enable Root User
ok out using password as requested
quit NetInfo Manager
Log out, Log In as 'root' user
navigate to '/var/spool' folder
open '/cups/' folder create a new '/tmp/' folder
Log out as 'root' user and log back in normally.

All is well now and I have 12GB of space back again–yippeee!!!

Thanks for all your help.

Cheers

Trevor

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[Antony]

Hello Trevor,

I'm glad that your problem is now solved.

I put in sudo rm -rf /var/spool/cups/tmp/ and removed that 12GB.

However, I was then not able to print anything and with help found out I needed to create a replacement tmp folder in my cups,

I gave you a different command, the one without [tt]-r[/tt], but I did not explain it. You should know the reason now, it was designed not to delete the [tt]tmp[/tt] folder itself. I shall explain more next time.

And thanks for letting us know the steps on creating [tt]tmp[/tt] folder.

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[trevor2005]

Hello again.

Have this Disk Full problem again and again the computer is keeping files in: /private/var/spool/cups/tmp almost 10GB worth.

I have deleted these before using a piece of code in Terminal but it did cause some problems with printing as it also removed the tmp folder which I had to re-create (difficult for me at least)

I used this piece of code: sudo rm -rf /var/spool/cups/tmp/
Do you know what code to use that will not remove the folder?


Also on a slightly different note I was running my Norton and it came up with lots of Major Errors that it could not fix to do with Nodes and yet I re-run it and it didn't show those errors–do I have them or not, anything I should worry about?


Regards

Trevor

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.23; Mac_PowerPC)

[Antony]

Hello again.

Have this Disk Full problem again and again the computer is keeping files in: /private/var/spool/cups/tmp almost 10GB worth.

Err, are those all due to the printing documents?

I used this piece of code: sudo rm -rf /var/spool/cups/tmp/
Do you know what code to use that will not remove the folder?

Try this:
1. check what files are in that folder first.
[tt]sudo ls -l /private/var/spool/cups/tmp[/tt]

2. delete those files through terminal.
[tt]sudo rm /private/var/spool/cups/tmp/*.*[/tt]
(deleting all files under [tt]/private/var/spool/cups/tmp[/tt], but not the [tt]tmp[/tt] folder itself.

BTW, which version of Mac OS X are you running? and which version of Norton are you using?

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[trevor2005]

You are so fast, appreciate it.

I put in your bit of code: sudo ls -l /private/var/spool/cups/tmp and it gave me a list (don't know what all this means?)
Then I tried your other piece of code: sudo rm /private/var/spool/cups/tmp/*.* however this did not work came up with: No such file or directory

Are you sure I need /private in that piece of code?

In answer to your other questions: I use Mac OSX 10.3.9 and Norton SystemWorks 3.0

I do really appreciate your time and advice.
Regards
Trevor

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