Maintaining your Linux OS
Overview
Basic
management
Passwords
Checking
storage space
Checking
processes
Managing
users
Shutting down
and restarting your computer
Automating
tasks
Linux file management
File compression and
archiving tools
File managers
File
splitters
Linux networking
Getting
started
MAC and IP
addresses
Domain names
Adding a Linux
host to an existing network
Building a
private network
Configuring the network
interface
Security
Uninstalling Linux
Summary
|
Checking storage space
The df command provides a report of the available
disk space on your system. It is worth checking the disk usage from
time to time as, if you exceed the space allocated to your Linux
partition, then you are likely to run into difficulties. If your
disk usage appears to be very high, particularly in the
/var directory, then you should explore the contents
of the /var/spool/mail directory. It is in this
directory that mail is stored before it is processed by your chosen
mail tool. Sometimes the mail tools are not configured to remove
the data from the mailbox file in
/var/spool/mail and, as a result, this file can grow
very large. It is also worth keeping an eye on the hidden
directories that are maintained and updated by your web browser.
For example, if you are using Netscape, then you might find that
the .netscape/cache directory can also become very
large, particularly if you download large quantities of multimedia
files from the Internet.
|