How do I limit the growth of a JFS filesystem

[Ronfogg]

Hi:

I need to limit the growth of my '/var' filesystem on an AIX server running 4.3.3. I am unable to schedule the downtime to reorvg the ROOTVG at this time, and am unable as well to expand the filesystem any more. But I must limit it's expansion to keep it from filling up. Any ideas out there?

Thanks

 

[ademeter]

Hi,
if I understand you right, your /var is filling up and you do not know why. If this is the case, check the following places in var:
/var/adm/wtmp
/var/adm/sulog
/var/tmp/snmpd.log
/var/tmp/dpid.log
/var/spool/mail/ - check who is getting large mails

or if none is your case, then just run:
cd /var
du -sk *
...and pick up your "guilty" directories and clean up.

 

[bi]

Check this thread: thread52-68802. There several answers in there the suggestions on how to clean up /var. Running du -sk * | sort -n will sort the output so the largest are at the bottom of the list.

 

[Ronfogg]

For 'ademeter'

Thanks, But I had already checked all of that out. Utilization for '/var/spool', and '/var/docsearch' are the highest, but that is what I expected. I did locate a couple of mail users, and am pruning their files daily by script. What I need though, and thought I remembered from school; is a way to limit the maximum size of a filesystem. The scenario would be: Create a filesystem of X size, and set a limit on it whereby it could only grow to x% - say 90%, or 95% of it's set filesystem size. I think there also is a way for SendMail to alert on this at specified levels.

 

[jwtesch]

You can set the max message size in /etc/sendmail.cf
# maximum message size
#O MaxMessageSize=1000000

Also you can set the minimum number of free blocks on the filesystem to a larger value and then sendmail will stop receiving more
# minimum number of free blocks on filesystem
O MinFreeBlocks=100

Or create a separate filesystem for /var/spool/mail and then it won't hurt anything else. You can also do this with your print spool directory.

 

[tomaix]

try changing the properties of the logical volume that corresponds to /var filesystem. By default the maximum partitios for this lv is 512....and you can restrict this to control the filesystem abnormal growth.