EXPANDING ASL LOG FILES FILLING UP MY HD

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Level 1

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EXPANDING ASL LOG FILES FILLING UP MY HD

Hello, i am having a similar problem to the person who made this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2804344

I posted on that thread but i thought i would start my own discussion here as that was posted in the snow leopard forum.

Here are my specs

here is my problem. my asl log files are increasing in size beyond my control and they are taking up my hard drive space.

i have tried to look at problem logs with console but i can't figure out whats doing the damage. theres so much gibberish about kernels and question marks, different apps with different errors. its too overwhelming for me. i am using omnidisksweeper to locate the 'problem files' (ie the ever-expanding asl log files in private/var/log).

Oddly enough, the one file that is most likely to be causing the problem is

the one that isn't in the asl folder. Here's its path:

/private/var/log/asl.db

Delete it first, then empty the /Private/var/log/asl/ directory.

this is something that was posted on that similar thread (link above). instead of typing in paths in terminal can i just use omnidisksweeper.

as you can see below i am able to go ahead and destroy asl.db and the massive asl files in the asl directory by selecting them and hitting delete. my question is can i go ahead with the destruction of these files, or will doing so cause other problems me?

any help would be appreciated. thanx.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 6, 2011 12:31 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,849 points

May 6, 2011 12:36 PM in response to wrekkbeach

Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. Enter or paste the following commands one at a time. Press RETURN after each.

sudo rm -rf /private/var/log/asl.db

sudo rm -rf /Private/var/log/asl/*.*

You will be prompted for your admin password which will not be echoed.

Restart the computer or enter "reboot" at the Terminal prompt and press RETURN.

Kappy

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Answer 2

wrekkbeach Author

Level 1

1 points

May 6, 2011 1:14 PM in response to Kappy

thnx kappy for the reply. ok here's an update. i went to https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1831184?start=15&tstart=0 as recommended on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2000362 and grabbed a fix called ASLmanagerfix.app. Ran it and it made a folder on the desktop with all the asl logs files and everything and said i could delete them which i did. then tried to restart and my macbook closed everything but froze with the wheel turning forever and would not shut down so i did a hard shut down and moments later switched it back on. lots of space was freed up but the problem of space being filled at the rate that it was before deletion still persists. furthermore, it is still asl that is growing. i will try your terminal commands now and report back. thnx again.

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Answer 3

wrekkbeach Author

Level 1

1 points

May 6, 2011 1:27 PM in response to wrekkbeach

so just restarted successfully, although i had to do it by clicking the apple and then restart. for some reason terminal said i couldn't ask it to reboot, it said operation not allowed or something like that. anyway it seems to have done the trick! my fan has calmed down too, after so long. stable memory, stable cpu usage. thank you!

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Answer 4

mwedzi

Level 1

0 points

May 23, 2011 2:04 AM in response to wrekkbeach

wrekkbeach, has this solved your problem permanantly?

I have a similar problem and it started a while ago. I followed directions I found online to download Disk Activity X, which allowed me to see what was taking up all the space. I saw it was these private asl log files being talked about here. I used the commands given above to delete the files through Terminal. That worked, giving me back 70+ gigs of hard drive, but has not solved the underlying problem, i.e. the fact that I have these runaway files. Here's a screen shot of what that looks like:

On another site, someone else had the same problem (this problem is all over my google search results) and someone suggested they look at Console in real time to see if there was a problem. I never really looked at Console before, so I don't know what a normal one looks like. But there is one process happening frequently and being logged frequently, several times a minute. It has to do with McAfee.

Is McAfee my problem? Should I uninstall (I never know how to completely uninstall in Mac since it doesn't have an uninstall function. I wonder if improper uninstalling of McAfee in the past might be the cause of this)? Would this solve the problem, you all think?

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