Consloe Log taking up all my free space!!!!

[javabear90]

ACK!!! all of my free space.... evey bit of it was taken up by console log. I was using iTunes with 8.35somthin gigs free and all of the sudden I got you start up disk is almost full. Upon further investigation I found that the Console long is taking up all of my space. What should I do? If I delete it, will my computer explode?

 

[emw]

Well, I think it is safe to say that your system won't blow up if you delete the information within the console.log file. In fact, if you run the Console application you can view the contents and clear the log file.

What you want to find out is why it got so big in the first place? What kinds of messages are in the log file - it may help you to understand what the issue is. Generally, the console.log file will store error messages or other non-critical system messages. Mine was about 8K.

 

[javabear90]

The log program crashes when I open it.... Not good. What should I do? I am tempted to delete it. Or I could transfer it to my new 250gig external drive.
Thanks,
-Ted

 

[telecomm]

Have you tried running the maintenance scripts using something like MacJanitor? It's a really handy freeware app.

Alternatively, you could run the relevant scripts from the terminal window, but I can't remember exactly what they are.

Running MacJanitor (or something equivalent) should help clean up the log files and shrink them to a reasonable size.

 

[tomf87]

Zero it out using terminal by issuing '> console.log':

mac:/var username$ cd /Library/Logs/Console/username/
mac:/Library/Logs/Console/username username$ ls -la
total 88
drwx------  8 username   admin    272  1 Sep 08:17 .
drwxrwxrwx  3 root  admin    102 30 Aug 21:22 ..
-rw-------  1 username   admin   8942  3 Sep 09:49 console.log
-rw-------  1 username   admin    329 31 Aug 13:44 console.log.0
-rw-------  1 username   admin  16381 31 Aug 11:10 console.log.1
-rw-------  1 username   admin     63 30 Aug 21:57 console.log.2
-rw-------  1 username   admin     63 30 Aug 21:42 console.log.3
-rw-------  1 username   admin    132 30 Aug 21:22 console.log.4
mac:/Library/Logs/Console/username username$ > console.log
mac:/Library/Logs/Console/username username$ ls -l
total 64
-rw-------  1 username  admin      0  3 Sep 10:17 console.log
-rw-------  1 username  admin    329 31 Aug 13:44 console.log.0
-rw-------  1 username  admin  16381 31 Aug 11:10 console.log.1
-rw-------  1 username  admin     63 30 Aug 21:57 console.log.2
-rw-------  1 username  admin     63 30 Aug 21:42 console.log.3
-rw-------  1 username  admin    132 30 Aug 21:22 console.log.4
mac:/Library/Logs/Console/username username$

 

[jeremy.king]

Zero it out using terminal by issuing '> console.log':

You may also want to remove the old/archived ones using 'rm console.log.*'