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"private" & "var" folders 3GB
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Oct 2004
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is this normal?? i've been looking at what's taking up all the space on my HD with whatsize, and i found out my "private" folder is 3GB and the "var" folder in it is 2.97GB... should they be this huge? the var folder has ~300MB files in it.. if i delete it will my computer die or something?
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Moderator  Join Date: May 2001
Location: Hilbert space
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You would have to reinstall your computer then. Don't delete anything from /private and /var (unless you know exactly what you are doing, of course). This is where MacOS X keeps its most basic system files.
So don't delete them.
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2001
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Originally Posted by pyn
is this normal?? i've been looking at what's taking up all the space on my HD with whatsize, and i found out my "private" folder is 3GB and the "var" folder in it is 2.97GB... should they be this huge? the var folder has ~300MB files in it.. if i delete it will my computer die or something?
is it in /private/var/vm?
That's your swap space. How much RAM do you have in the machine?
And if you delete /var/vm when the system is running, she's gonna kernel panic.
Try rebooting and see what size the stuff is.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jul 2002
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Get an app called Disk Inventory X and see what it turns up. Aside from the obvious VM space, you may have a really huge log file or something.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: 888500128
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note: "vm" and "swap space" are referring to the virtual memory system.
When your regular RAM (memory) runs out (from running a number of applications or having large documents open), the computer will unload stuff onto the disk to make space in memory.
That can be several gigabytes.
Perfectly normal.
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Seattle
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Also, /var and /Private/var are the same folder
/var is an alias
I believe this is to make apple's Next style UNIX system, which tried to clean up the rambling file system with a handy Private folder, compatible with other UNIX style systems, which enjoy some good filesystem sprawl.
Anyway, if you type this in the terminal:
ls -lh /Private/var/vm
you should see your swap files listed and hopefully they will account for your disk usage.
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You can take the dude out of So Cal, but you can't take the dude outta the dude, dude!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Houston, Texas
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I just had disk full issues on my server. 50GB was in /var/samba in an archived log file! I used Omni Disk Sweeper to find it.
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