Ubuntu 14.04 LTS – /var fills with logs and stops critical services – Fix & Prevention

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Disk usage reaches 100 percent and daemons fail due to no space.

Environment & Reproduction

Appears on busy nodes with verbose logging and weak retention policies.

Root Cause Analysis

Oversized logs and absent rotation quickly exhaust /var capacity.

Quick Triage

Free emergency space and identify top directories consuming capacity.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Use du and logrotate checks to find runaway files and retention gaps.

Solution – Primary Fix

Archive or truncate safely, enforce rotation, and adjust retention limits.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Move high-volume logs to separate volume or centralized logging platform.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Free space stabilizes and impacted services recover normal operations.

Rollback Plan

Restore archived logs if compliance or forensic review requires them.

Prevention & Hardening

Set capacity alerts and explicit log retention standards.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Common with journal growth, core dump accumulation, and package cache bloat.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

View all Ubuntu 14.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Ubuntu disk management and logrotate administration docs.