You can check the size of files and sort them by using the ls command. You can find files that exceed a size limit by using the find command. For more information, see the ls(1) and find(1) man pages.
If you run out of space in the /var directory, do not symbolically link the /var directory to a directory on a file system with more disk space. Doing so, even as a temporary measure, might cause problems for certain Solaris daemon processes and utilities.
Change to the directory where the files you want to check are located.
Display the size of the files.
$ ls [-lh] [-s] |
Displays a list of files and directories in long format, showing the sizes in bytes. (See the example that follows.)
Scales file sizes and directory sizes into Kbytes, Mbytes, Gbytes, or Tbytes when the file or directory size is larger than 1024 bytes. This option also modifies the output displayed by the -o, -n, -@, and -g options to display file or directory sizes in the new format. For more information, see thels(1) man page.
Displays a list of the files and directories, showing the sizes in blocks.
The following example shows that the lastlog and messages files are larger than the other files in the /var/adm directory.
$ cd /var/adm $ ls -lh total 148 drwxrwxr-x 5 adm adm 512 Nov 26 09:39 acct/ -rw------- 1 uucp bin 0 Nov 26 09:25 aculog drwxr-xr-x 2 adm adm 512 Nov 26 09:25 exacct/ -r--r--r-- 1 root other 342K Nov 26 13:56 lastlog drwxr-xr-x 2 adm adm 512 Nov 26 09:25 log/ -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20K Nov 26 13:55 messages drwxr-xr-x 2 adm adm 512 Nov 26 09:25 passwd/ drwxrwxr-x 2 adm sys 512 Nov 26 09:39 sa/ drwxr-xr-x 2 root sys 512 Nov 26 09:49 sm.bin/ -rw-rw-rw- 1 root bin 0 Nov 26 09:25 spellhist drwxr-xr-x 2 root sys 512 Nov 26 09:25 streams/ -rw-r--r-- 1 root bin 3.3K Nov 26 13:56 utmpx -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 26 10:17 vold.log -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 19K Nov 26 13:56 wtmpx |
The following example shows that the lpsched.1 file uses two blocks.
$ cd /var/lp/logs $ ls -s total 2 0 lpsched 2 lpsched.1 |
Display the size of files in blocks from largest to smallest.
If the characters or columns for the files are different, use the following command to sort a list of files by block size, from largest to smallest.
$ ls -l | sort +4rn | more |
Note that this command sorts files in a list by the character that is in the fourth field, starting from the left.
If the characters or columns for the files are the same, use the following command to sort a list of files by block size, from largest to smallest.
$ ls -s | sort -nr | more |
Note that this command sorts files in a list, starting with the left most character.
$ cd /var/adm $ ls -l | sort +4rn | more -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4568368 Oct 17 08:36 lastlog -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 697040 Oct 17 12:30 pacct.9 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 280520 Oct 17 13:05 pacct.2 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 277360 Oct 17 12:55 pacct.4 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 264080 Oct 17 12:45 pacct.6 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 255840 Oct 17 12:40 pacct.7 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 254120 Oct 17 13:10 pacct.1 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 250360 Oct 17 12:25 pacct.10 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 248880 Oct 17 13:00 pacct.3 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 247200 Oct 17 12:35 pacct.8 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 246720 Oct 17 13:15 pacct.0 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 245920 Oct 17 12:50 pacct.5 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 190229 Oct 5 03:02 messages.1 -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 156800 Oct 17 13:17 pacct -rw-r--r-- 1 adm adm 129084 Oct 17 08:36 wtmpx |
In the following example, the lastlog and messages files are the largest files in the /var/adm directory.
$ cd /var/adm $ ls -s | sort -nr | more 48 lastlog 30 messages 24 wtmpx 18 pacct 8 utmpx 2 vold.log 2 sulog 2 sm.bin/ 2 sa/ 2 passwd/ 2 pacct1 2 log/ 2 acct/ 0 spellhist 0 aculog total 144 |
To locate and display the names of files that exceed a specified size, use the find command.
$ find directory -size +nnn |
Identifies the directory that you want to search.
Is a number of 512-byte blocks. Files that exceed this size are listed.
The following example shows how to find files larger than 400 blocks in the current working directory. The -print option displays the output of the find command.
$ find . -size +400 -print ./Howto/howto.doc ./Howto/howto.doc.backup ./Howto/howtotest.doc ./Routine/routineBackupconcepts.doc ./Routine/routineIntro.doc ./Routine/routineTroublefsck.doc ./.record ./Mail/pagination ./Config/configPrintadmin.doc ./Config/configPrintsetup.doc ./Config/configMailappx.doc ./Config/configMailconcepts.doc ./snapshot.rs |