[David2213]

I was trying to free up some space on my comp and i found this file that 1.8 gigs. The path is...Macintosh HD/library/logs/console/501. Does anyone know what this is and if i can delete it or will that mess everything up? Thanks for the help.

[frdmfghtr]

I looked at mine, and the entire folder is about 1.2 MB, so yours is on the far side of huge it would seem.

I noticed from your sig that you run a pair of notebooks. Try running MacJanitor (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10491) and perform "all tasks." This will run all teh daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance routines, which includes cleaning up and rotating the log files (somebody else will have to explain exacly what this does; best as I can tell, it archives old log data.) normally done on machines left on 24/7. Since notebooks typically aren't left on all the time, the routines may or may not run, depending on when they are used.

I think this explanation is right, I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong.

[Big Mac]

That explanation should not apply to machines running Tiger, frdm - Tiger runs the cron jobs when they're scheduled and immediately if they're overdue as a result of sleep or shutdown.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by David2213

I was trying to free up some space on my comp and i found this file that 1.8 gigs. The path is...Macintosh HD/library/logs/console/501. Does anyone know what this is and if i can delete it or will that mess everything up? Thanks for the help.

It's your first user's console log file, where errors (and status messages) thrown during program execution are stored for later examination.

A 1.8GB log file is indicative of a program that is trying fervently to do something, failing, and trying again with no delay. Opening the log file in a text editor capable of handling large files (e.g. TextWranger; do not use MS Word or TextEdit, both of which will choke on a file that size) should reveal a repeating sequence of errors, in this case, repeated a couple of million times.

You can safely delete the log files at any time. A new log file will simply be created the next time an error is to be logged.

tooki

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by tooki

Opening the log file in a text editor capable of handling large files (e.g. TextWranger; do not use MS Word or TextEdit, both of which will choke on a file that size) should reveal a repeating sequence of errors

Of course you can just use Console.app to view log files.

[tooki]

Not when they're that big. It chokes on them, too. My advice was based on dealing with this exact problem on a client's machine. Console.app couldn't handle the client's 700MB log. I can't imagine how it would fare on a file nearly 3 times that size.

tooki

[TETENAL]

Console.app only reads the tail of the log with the intention not to choke. I have no personal experience with such large log files though, so I believe you that it does regardless.

[David2213]

i checked those logs and they all had something to do with my powermate. not sure what it said but it deleted fine. thanks for the help

[mduell]

Or you could use tail in Terminal.app and not worry abotu what Console.app will try to do.