a month or two ago, my macbook started mysteriously losing HDD space. i'd delete a few files, and an hour later it'd be full again.
i used omni disksweeper to locate bloated directories, and came up with 10 gb in private/var/tmp. it was full of album art jpgs, usually 160k each (which is pretty large, considering what it is), and a corresponding tmp file of no size. i delete them periodically, but they just gradually refill, going in alphabetical order. i cleared the folder when i started writing this, and now there are 1,212 items.
the big problem is that it duplicates jpgs over and over - i'm guessing once for each song on the album. but two things are strange about this:
1. the album art that appears corresponds to albums in my library i have NO album art for.
2. this happens whether itunes is running or not.
3. this happens whether itunes is INSTALLED or not.
4. this happens even when all programs are closed.
5. it does not happen if the airport is off.
i've already turned off itunes's "download missing artwork." that was the first thing i did.
other steps i've taken:
- told spotlight to stop indexing pictures, music, then everything.
- googled my problem (and searched this forum). others have complained about mysterious disk space loss, but no mention of album art or jpgs.
- checked that VLC is set to download album artwork manually.
i've been dealing with this for over a month and i don't know where else to look.
i used omni disksweeper to locate bloated directories, and came up with 10 gb in private/var/tmp. it was full of album art jpgs, usually 160k each (which is pretty large, considering what it is), and a corresponding tmp file of no size. i delete them periodically, but they just gradually refill, going in alphabetical order. i cleared the folder when i started writing this, and now there are 1,212 items.
the big problem is that it duplicates jpgs over and over - i'm guessing once for each song on the album. but two things are strange about this:
1. the album art that appears corresponds to albums in my library i have NO album art for.
2. this happens whether itunes is running or not.
3. this happens whether itunes is INSTALLED or not.
4. this happens even when all programs are closed.
5. it does not happen if the airport is off.
i've already turned off itunes's "download missing artwork." that was the first thing i did.
other steps i've taken:
- told spotlight to stop indexing pictures, music, then everything.
- googled my problem (and searched this forum). others have complained about mysterious disk space loss, but no mention of album art or jpgs.
- checked that VLC is set to download album artwork manually.
i've been dealing with this for over a month and i don't know where else to look.