HDD space question...

[tonino]

Hi all!

When we got our Linux + CPanel VPS there was 1.5GB of space already in use (obviously due to OS & Cpanel installation). Is that normal or should we get 10GB of free space (starter) even after OS ans CPanel are installed?

Our domain accounts take 1.3GB of space (as CPanel indicates) and our total used disk space is 4.3GB.

So 1.3GB (accounts' space) + 1.5GB = 2.8GB

Which means that there is about a 1.5 GB (4.3 - 2.8) unaccounted for.
How can we check what is taking up our HDD space? Could this be some kind of error?

For example, there is a file in /usr directory called: tmpDSK, which is about 500MB, could that be deleted in order to free up space?

[Andre]

Hi Tonino,

A plain VPS (with OS installed, but without control panel) comes with 10GB usable space. A control panel like cPanel does use up space though, so that is normal.

Regarding the 1.5gb unaccounted space: most likely that is being used by logfiles and such. The /usr/tmpDSK are most likely the same files as in the /tmp directory. In that directory usually temporary files such as session details are stored, and page cache, things like that. If it uses up 500mb space it shouldn't be a problem to clean that out.

[tonino]

Hi Andre!

Thanks for the quick reply..!
the files in /tmp directory take only a few kilobytes. Do you think that I could delete tmpDSK without causing any problems?

I can also see in / var/ log/ some files like: maillog.1, maillog.2, maillog.3, etc that take about 17MB each... could those be deleted safely?

I didn't open a ticket for this because 1. I do not consider it a technical problem 2. I was hoping that other users could share their experience with me regarding the way Linux and Cpanel handles HDD space.

Again, thanks a lot for your fast reply.

[Andre]

Before deleting the tmpDSK files it would be smart to have our techs take a look at it, just to make sure it's safe to remove the data.

Regarding the maillogs: if you don't need them it should be safe to remove them.

You'll find the biggest log files in /usr/local/apache/domlogs - the more active the site, the bigger the logfile (and if you don't need the logfiles for anything, you may as well remove them from time to time).

[tonino]

To be honest I do not really know whether I need the maillogs & domlogs... if they do not affect statistics calculation (or even delete stats - webalizer info, etc) and do not affect any other service, I think I do not need them.

I certainly don't need them for de-bugging or security access purposes for the time being, if that's what you mean.

[dino]

More active is your server, bigger are your log. Logrotate rotate your logs daily, weekly or monthly or when the logs are too big. It Keep some copies of your logs before reset them.

You can specify how often your logs should be rotate and how long you want to keep the copies. You can save some space by rotating them more often and keep less copies.

Read the man of logrotate to see all its options. The setting for your mail logs are in /etc/logrotate.conf and /etc/logrotate.d/syslog.conf.

For the programs that analyse your logs, I don't know for Webanalyser, but I suppose it is like Awstats that just use the current log and cache the result of his analyses in on other file.