I have a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook onto which I have installed Leopoard (I also installed Leopard on a newish Intel iMac and a G5 iMac). The MacBook has been acting very strangely. Before installing, I did all the usual and recommended stuff, including eliminating unused apps, trial apps, etc., so that after that and the installation there was about 10 GB of space left on the smallish disk drive.

Earlier this evening, my wife was using this computer and complained that she was getting a message saying that the startup disk was almost full. Lo and behold, when I looked at the bottom of the Finder window, it said there was less than 100MB available, but as I watched (without doing anything), that number slowly marched up to over 1 GB and then, equally slowly, back down to the 100 MB range and back and forth. I've cleared the caches, emptied the trash and removed another couple of apps, yet this behavior continues.

What on earth is going on? I don't see any obvious place where stuff is going, but the machine does slow when the reported available space is low. Any ideas?

Please see Where Did My Disk Space Go? Be sure to use Hal's script if you do not find the culprit by reading the article and exploring the most common places in which files are unexpectedly found.

Thanks for this! It will take me a while to digest everything here and then to try it. I'll do so as quickly as I can and report back.

You might check out Baseline as a new tool for monitoring how your disk space is used. It goes a step beyond the other tools in this category.

An excellent donation-ware app that I've been using for years is Disk Inventory X.

http://www.derlien.com

It will also give you a quick visual on any volume, or folder. And it does work well in Leopard... I just ran it again before posting this.

Joe,

Baseline 0.2.9 has been released. My initial reaction to it is that this is very promising software.

Run from an administrative account, Baseline cannot see the contents or size of the folder at the root level of the drive called /.Spotlight-V100. This folder is not commonly a cause of trouble, but I did see a report this week in the Apple Discussion Forums of one that was 65 GB (!). Here is a workaround in Terminal:

[This is also a note in the “Missing Disk Space (note in progress)” entry.]

The sudo -s command must be used before changing the current directory to /.Spotlight-V100


Welcome to Darwin!
MMT3s-Computer-2:~ MMT3$ sudo -s
Password:
MMT3s-Computer-2:~ root# cd /.Spotlight-V100
MMT3s-Computer-2:/.Spotlight-V100 root# ls -lias
total 867144
359148 0 drw------- 7 root admin 238 Feb 3 2007 .
2 0 drwxrwxr-t 54 root admin 1938 Oct 27 16:13 ..
359188 0 -rw------- 1 root admin 0 Oct 27 16:17 .journalHistoryLog
359178 41640 -rw------- 1 root admin 21319680 Oct 27 16:18 .store.db
359437 783856 -rw------- 1 root admin 401334272 Oct 27 16:18 ContentIndex.db
359185 8 -rw------- 1 root admin 378 Feb 3 2007 _rules.plist
359176 41640 -rw------- 1 root admin 21319680 Oct 27 16:18 store.db
MMT3s-Computer-2:/.Spotlight-V100 root#




In the Finder, one use the Go To Folder feature to see the contents of /.Spotlight-V100 while logged in as the root user:

_rules_plist is 4K
ContentIndex.db
ContentIndex.db is 39.7 MB or 41672704 bytes (agrees with Terminal)
store.db is 17.6 MB or 18436096 bytes (agrees with Terminal)

The Finder does not show invisible files unless such viewing has been enabled with a utlity or a command in Terminal.

Baseline is the fastest disk scanning app on Mac OS X

Well, I ran Hal's scripts and (see below) found that there are some horribly bloated files. Leading the pack, but not alone, is the .Spotlight-V100 with 30 gigabytes.

So, I've found bloated files, but don't know how to get rid of them or how to prevent them from growing again.

By the way, from the terminal I ran the periodic (daily, weekly & monthly) maintenance scripts from terminal, but nothing changed (I ran them yesterday, too).

After removing photos, music, and video files, as well as eliminating several unused apps this morning, I started out with nearly 14 G available space on the disk. Now it is down to less than 200 MB.

Now what?



Last login: Sun Nov 4 11:52:19 on console
R-Brashears-MacBook:~ rkbrashear$ sudo -v; sudo find -xf /.Trashes /Volumes /Library /private /Temp* \
> -type f -size +200000 -print0 | sudo xargs -0 ls -lohdSr

WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.

To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.

Password:
find: /Temp*: No such file or directory
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 124M Nov 1 19:52 /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_i386
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 154M Nov 1 20:13 /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_rosetta
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rbrashear 196M Nov 4 12:06 /Library/Application Support/Mac Minder/Debug Logs/monitor.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root 199M Nov 19 2003 /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Tutorial/Movies/Our First Snowman.mov
-rw------- 1 _installer 222M Nov 1 19:51 /Library/Receipts/db/a.receiptdb
-rw------T 1 root 2.0G Nov 4 10:29 /private/var/vm/sleepimage
R-Brashears-MacBook:~ rkbrashear$ IFS=$'\n'; for f in /Volumes /.Spotlight* /.Trashes /Library/Logs /private/\
> {var/{log,spool,db,vm,tmp},tmp} /Temp*; do sudo du -hsx $f; done; IFS=$' \t\n'
Password:
32K /Volumes
30G /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
14M /Library/Logs
4.9M /private/var/log
476K /private/var/spool
290M /private/var/db
2.1G /private/var/vm
9.8M /private/var/tmp
8.0K /private/tmp
du: /Temp*: No such file or directory

Oh yeah... are we having fun yet?

code:

find: /Temp*: No such file or directory
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       124M Nov 1 19:52 /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_i386
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       154M Nov 1 20:13 /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_rosetta
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rbrashear  196M Nov 4 12:06 /Lib/App Support/Mac Minder/Debug Logs/monitor.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root       199M Nov 19 2003 /Lib/App Support/iDVD/Tutorial/Movies/First Snowman.mov
-rw------- 1 _installer 222M Nov 1 19:51 /Library/Receipts/db/a.receiptdb
-rw------T 1 root       2.0G Nov 4 10:29 /private/var/vm/sleepimage


 32K /Volumes
 30G /.Spotlight-V100
  0B /.Trashes
 14M /Library/Logs
4.9M /private/var/log
476K /private/var/spool
290M /private/var/db
2.1G /private/var/vm
9.8M /private/var/tmp
8.0K /private/tmp
du: /Temp*: No such file or directory

Anything in the folder "/private/var/db/dyld/" is new to me... so
I don't know what the "right" size ranges or items should be there.
The "Mac Minder/Debug Logs/monitor.log" seems large, but idunno.

But that's small stuff which is likely correct (?).


Okay...

>> /private/var/vm/sleepimage
I would think that should be gone if you're awake.
Maybe a restart will clear that. It might could happen
if we set our Macs to sleep, and yank the power cord
out 1 second later. Or maybe an outage when our
batteries are already low? idunno. Try a restart...
if it stcks around, we can investigate *if* it should
be deleted manually. [never had to]



>> 2.1G /private/var/vm
You've grown a few swapfiles (not enough RAM?)
Definitely a restart will clear that.



>> 30G /.Spotlight-V100
No more calls please, we have a winner.

If I were you, I would a) stop indexing, b) erase that index.
c) pause and then take some measurements again... and
finally, d) startup indexing again (when the Mac is "free".)

code:

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo mdutil -E /
sudo mdutil -s /

At this point Terminal should show...

code:

/:
	Indexing disabled.

If measurements are made, hopefully that 30 gigs is gone.

When you're ready to let the Mac sit and spin for a while...

code:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Good luck!



>> /Temp*: No such file or directory

No sweat.

Leopard apparently has moved a bunch of caches and temp files
from where they used to be (for ages) into "/private/var/folders".
[Plus "Temporary Items" is an old OS9 thing I included for posterity.]
I'll eventually tweak those scripts, when I know the whole situation.

-HI-

Two things I should have said maybe...
BEFORE starting to reindex, I would also:

- Turn off Time Machine for a coupla hours.
- Boot off the Leopard DVD and repair the "disk". (not permissions)
   [or do fsck -fy in SingleUser mode.]

Hal, you're a miracle worker (see the reports below), I followed your instructions to the letter and now the Finder indicates more than 34GB available space on the disk.

I guess I'll never know why this situation came about (this machine has 2GB RAM). Do you think that it is likely this problem will re-occur?

In any case, now we're back to normal and the little machine is working fine -- as it cranks out its index. When that is done, I'll check the measurements out and see just how large the Spotlight file is.

Thanks so much, I really appreciate your time and knowledge.

Bob



Indexing disabled.
R-Brashears-MacBook:~ rkbrashear$ sudo -v; sudo find -xf /.Trashes /Volumes /Library /private /Temp* \
> -type f -size +200000 -print0 | sudo xargs -0 ls -lohdSr
find: /Temp*: No such file or directory
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 124M Nov 1 19:52 /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_i386
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 154M Nov 1 20:13 /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_rosetta
-rw-rw-rw- 1 rbrashear 197M Nov 4 16:42 /Library/Application Support/Mac Minder/Debug Logs/monitor.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root 199M Nov 19 2003 /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Tutorial/Movies/Our First Snowman.mov
-rw------- 1 _installer 222M Nov 1 19:51 /Library/Receipts/db/a.receiptdb
-rw------T 1 root 2.0G Nov 4 16:30 /private/var/vm/sleepimage
R-Brashears-MacBook:~ rkbrashear$ IFS=$'\n'; for f in /Volumes /.Spotlight* /.Trashes /Library/Logs /private/\
> {var/{log,spool,db,vm,tmp},tmp} /Temp*; do sudo du -hsx $f; done; IFS=$' \t\n'
32K /Volumes
4.0K /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
14M /Library/Logs
5.0M /private/var/log
476K /private/var/spool
290M /private/var/db
2.1G /private/var/vm
9.8M /private/var/tmp
0B /private/tmp
du: /Temp*: No such file or directory