WYNTK: UNIX System Admininistrator

Quick Reference to space and time questions

Information to find and keep

Are there any naming conventions at your site for temporary files?

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Are any files automatically deleted by the system? (e.g., those named core, those with a suffix of .backup or .temp, etc.)

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What filesystems are available for user files on your system?

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What changes are recommended when the system gets slow? Are there desktop accessories I should disable on an X terminal, applications I shouldn’t run, maximum number of formatting jobs at one time, etc.?

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Look at space available and space used

See the disk space available on your system:

    % df

See how much space your home directory and subdirectories take up:

    % du ~

If you want only a grand total, use the -s option:

    % du -s

Look at how big the files are in a directory:

    % ls -l

Do rough comparisons and see which files are the largest.

Clean up your home directory to save space

1. Get in the habit of creating temporary files with distinctive names—such as names ending in .temp or .tmp, or names beginning with a comma—so that you can quickly delete files that don’t matter.

2. Delete files named ...