Re: [cobalt-users] root login failure and /var at 100%

[David Liu <dyliu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:04 AM 11/1/2001 -0800, you wrote:
> David Liu wrote:
> >
> > folks-
> >
> > i've got a raq2 that has its /var directory at 100% capacity (i did a 
> df -h).
> >
> > and i can't su to root. just to be sure it wasn't a password-forgetfulness
> > problem, i pressed the password reset switch on the back of the machine.
> > still... i can't login as root, only as admin and the various users..
> >
> > based on the cobalt site, they tell me to do a restore if i get into this
> > situation. now, there MUST be some way to flush out, for example, the huge
> > log files that are sitting in the /var directory so that i can get back in
> > as root and do what i need to do.
> >
> > any thoughts?
>
> About all you can do is find a file owned by admin in the var partition
> and delete it. That should free up some room so you can su to root.

i had tried su'ing into other accounts so that i can delete the /var/mail 
files for the associated users and df -h still reports that /var is 100%...

> As a hedge against this problem in the future, it's a useful trick to
> make a 100K or so junk file in /var that's owned by admin.

that's a great idea!

> If you have access to the RaQ, you could also pull out the HD and mount
> it as a secondary drive in another Linux box that you do have root
> access on, and manually remove some files that way.

a royal pain.. trying to avoid this at all costs..

> --
> Bruce Timberlake
> Technology Engineer
> Sun Cobalt Server Appliances
> Sun Microsystems, Inc.