{"id":57649,"date":"2020-10-07T10:32:33","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T15:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cpanel.com\/?p=57649"},"modified":"2020-10-07T10:32:33","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T15:32:33","slug":"server-housekeeping-with-cpanel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devel.www.cpanel.net\/blog\/tips-and-tricks\/server-housekeeping-with-cpanel\/","title":{"rendered":"Server Housekeeping with cPanel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to Check for Disk Space in Linux<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Servers are your virtual home and, just like your real home, they can become cluttered with unwanted junk.&nbsp; In the case of servers, it\u2019s not trash but data you have to kick to the curb every once in a while.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without a regular clear out, data accumulates until it fills the server\u2019s storage devices. Servers need to be able to write data to their hard drives. When there\u2019s no space to store new stuff, the performance takes a hit and some software will stop working altogether.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We recommend that you keep at least 10 percent of the server\u2019s storage free, which means you will occasionally have to check disk space and find unused data to delete. In this article, we show you how to do just that with cPanel and the disk management tools on your Linux\u00ae server.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>How to Manage your Hard Drive Space in cPanel<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There are a couple of prerequisites you should know about before we explain how to manage hard drive space.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>You need to be able to log in as the root user to manage files outside of your home directory. While any user can manage their own files, only the root user can monitor and delete files owned by other users.<\/li><li>&nbsp;You will need to <a href=_-1261.html>log in to your server using SSH<\/a> to run file management commands.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>When you\u2019re concerned about disk space, WHM\u2019s <em>Disk Usage<\/em> tool should be your first destination. It checks Linux disk space and displays the results in an intuitive interface. You will find it under <em>System Health <\/em>in the WHM sidebar menu.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=_-1872.html alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57657\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Disk Usage<\/em> shows a list of storage devices, their sizes, and how full they are. The number of devices and their names differ depending on the configuration of the server, but if they are more than 90% full, you should delete old data.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the above image, we see that one of the hard drives on this server is dangerously full. To find out which files are causing the problem, we log in with SSH and use the command line to investigate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Check Disk Command<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>First, we\u2019ll use the <em>df <\/em>tool to check disk space on the server\u2019s hard drives. It provides more or less the same information as <em>Disk Usage<\/em>, but it\u2019s helpful if you want to start your investigation on the command line instead of in WHM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Run the command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>df -h<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>The -h flag tells <em>df<\/em> to use human-readable units instead of spitting out confusing byte counts. The output looks something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=_-1873.html alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57661\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>You can ignore the <em>tmpfs<\/em> devices; they\u2019re virtual disks stored in memory and may not be present on your server. We\u2019ve underlined the interesting entry: the disk named <em>\/dev\/vda1<\/em>, which is mounted on the root (\/) of the filesystem, <em>&nbsp;<\/em>is 92 percent full.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now we have verified that a disk is nearly full, we have to find out which files are responsible. For that, we use <em>du<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>du -sh \/*<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>The -s option produces a summary of the data so we can more easily identify large files and directories. As before, -h tells <em>du<\/em> to output sensible units.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of the command is a file argument. In the last step, we found the overfull drive was mounted on \u201c\/\u201d, so that\u2019s where we start our search. The * means everything inside the \/ directory.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s a section of the output from <em>du.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=_-1874.html alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57665\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As you can see, the \/var directory consumes 40 GB, dwarfing the amount of data in the other directories. So, we run <em>du <\/em>again on \/<em>var.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>&nbsp;<\/em>It\u2019s difficult to spot the largest files when there are lots of them, so we\u2019ll use <a href=_-1875.html><em>sort<\/em><\/a> to print big files first and <a href=_-1876.html><em>head<\/em><\/a> to grab the top 10.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>du -sh \/var\/* | sort -rh | head -n 10<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=_-1877.html alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57669\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ve found the culprit! There is an enormous 39GB file in \/var.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now we have to decide whether we can safely delete it or not. Deleting a file is irreversible, so you should do some research to verify that it doesn\u2019t contain data that matters to your or the server.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know that it\u2019s safe to remove <em>\/var\/largefile.log, <\/em>so we can delete it with the <em>rm <\/em>command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>rm -f \/var\/largefile.log<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to delete a directory of files, use this command instead:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>rm -rf \/var\/largedirectory<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>The -f option means \u201cforce\u201d. It tells <em>rm <\/em>to delete files without asking permission first. The -r option means \u201crecursive,\u201d and it makes <em>rm <\/em>delete everything inside a directory.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we go back to WHM\u2019s <em>Disk Usage <\/em>page, we see that the device is no longer full, and the problems caused by the lack of storage space have been resolved.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=_-1878.html alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57673\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Disk space problems are rarely caused by a single large file. In reality, you\u2019ll be dealing with lots of smaller files, but you can use the same process of identification and deletion with cPanel and the command line to find and remove any quantity of unwanted data.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As always, if you have any feedback or comments, please let us know. We are here to help in the best ways we can. You\u2019ll find us on <a href=_-38.html>Discord<\/a>, the <a href=_-40.html>cPanel forums<\/a>, and <a href=_-39.html>Reddit<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to Check for Disk Space in Linux Servers are your virtual home and, just like your real home, they can become cluttered with unwanted junk.&nbsp; In the case of servers, it\u2019s not trash but data you have to kick to the curb every once in a while.&nbsp; Without a regular clear out, data accumulates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":65537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tips-and-tricks"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Server Housekeeping with cPanel | cPanel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=_-1879.html \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Server Housekeeping with cPanel | cPanel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How to Check for Disk Space in Linux Servers are your virtual home and, just like your real home, they can become cluttered with unwanted junk.&nbsp; 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