FreeBSD 13 Disk Space Exhaustion Under /var

📖 ~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

Rapid growth in /var on FreeBSD 13 can halt package operations, logging, and critical daemon behavior.

Environment & Reproduction

System reports no space left on device, pkg fails, and services cannot write pid or log files.

Root Cause Analysis

Unrotated logs, crash dumps, stale pkg cache, and verbose application logging are common contributors.

Quick Triage

Run df -h, du -xhd 2 /var, and inspect /var/log plus /var/cache/pkg for largest consumers.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Identify top offenders before deleting files needed for forensics. image_ref=0

Solution – Primary Fix

Rotate logs with newsyslog, clean cache using pkg clean -a, and move heavy paths to ZFS datasets if needed. image_ref=1

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Restart impacted services after freeing space to restore normal pid file and socket creation.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Adjust /etc/newsyslog.conf and application logging levels to balance retention with disk limits.

Rollback Plan

Network effects are indirect, but monitor forwarded logs if remote collectors fail due to local disk pressure.

Prevention & Hardening

Confirm healthy free space and rerun failed pkg or service operations to ensure recovery.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Set disk usage alerts and scheduled cleanup tasks for cache and old logs.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for freebsd-13.

View all freebsd-13 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

See man newsyslog, man pkg-clean, and FreeBSD storage administration notes.