/var is getting full

[Graham Watkins]

Amedee Van Gasse (on Ubuntu mailing lists) wrote:
> On Sat, October 10, 2009 10:15, Graham Watkins wrote:
>   
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> The other day when installing some updates, I got a warning message
>> saying that /var was too full.
>>
>> I checked using df and found it was 94% used.  (The partition is
>> 4.2Gb.)  This certainly seems a lot.  My 9.04 installation is just over
>> a month old so I'm surprised it's got full so quickly.
>>
>> What's the best (safest) way of slimming it down?
>>     
>
> Please give us the output of
>
> sudo du -hs /var
>
>
>
> (sudo because there are some directories that are only accessible for root)
>
>
> Thet will tell us where the biggest space hog is.
> With that knowledge, we can give you better advice.
>
>
>   
Hi Amedee,

sudo du -hs /var/*

3.3G    /var/backup
4.3M    /var/backups
36M    /var/cache
4.0K    /var/crash
44K    /var/games
251M    /var/lib
4.0K    /var/local
0    /var/lock
12M    /var/log
16K    /var/lost+found
4.0K    /var/mail
4.0K    /var/opt
112K    /var/run
292K    /var/spool
2.5M    /var/tmp

As/ /I wrote before, /var/backups  is taking up most of the space and 
contains a single file named

2009-09-26_10.27.20.524996.graham-desktop.ful

I think, and please correct me if you know different, that this is a legacy file from the sbackup program which I had installed for about a week and then removed.  I have no idea why it would save a backup in /var though.  I'm thinking that I can probably delete it without causing any problems though I might just move it first and see what happens.

I'm open to suggestions though.

Graham