Managing VPS Logs: A Guide to Deleting Logs Safely

Log files are crucial for monitoring and troubleshooting Linux-based systems, providing valuable information about system events, errors, and performance. However, improper management can lead to disk space consumption, performance issues, or even system crashes, requiring careful attention.

a) Linux

Deleting temporary files

1. First, enter the ls -la /tmp/ and ls -la /var/tmp/ commands in the terminal to check the contents of these folders to prevent the deletion of important data files.

2. Then enter the rm -rf /tmp/* and rm -rf /var/tmp/* commands to delete the temporary files.

Clearing the repository cache

1. To clear the local repository’s cache of received package files, enter the yum clean all command on CentOS/RedHat systems or apt-get clean on Ubuntu/Debian systems.

Cleaning up old logs

1. To compress or clear the logs, enter the find /var/log \( -name “*.[0-9]” -o -name “*.*.[0-9]” -o -name “*.gz” \) -exec rm {} \; find /var/log/ -type f -name “*log” -exec cp /dev/null {} \; command into the terminal.

2. To clean up outdated log archives daily, enter the 0 0 * * * find /var/log \( -name “*.[0-9]” -o -name “*.*.[0-9]” -o -name “*.gz” \) -exec rm {} \; && find /var/log/ -type f -name “*log” -exec cp /dev/null {} \; command into the terminal.

b) Windows

1. First, search for “Disk Cleanup” in the taskbar search box and select it from the list of results to clean a disk.

2. Then, select the drive you want to clean and select the “OK” button.

3. After that, under Files to delete, select the file type you want to delete. To get a description of the file type, select the file type and click the OK button.