Add another page to the "Book Of Irony":

code:

$ ls -lknh ~/Library/Application\ Support/Baseline 
total 57744
drwxr-xr-x  2 501  501    68B Nov 11 04:56 Baselines
-rw-r--r--  1 501  501    56M Nov 11 04:57 CleanerPackageIndex.db

A few days ago, I ran v1.0 to see the scenery. Thought it was pretty okay.

Only tonight did I notice my ~/Library looked a little pregnant. 56 megs!!!
... for a snapshot... or what? Seems unnecessarily large to me.

I have not yet tried exploring Baseline’s comparison with an earlier run when folders many levels down are displayed using disclosure trianlges, but I do not see how that could be done without having saved pathname and size data about every file on the volume.

I feel like I am in way over my head. I have been getting a message that my start up disk is almost full and that I have to delete files. This is what I got on terminal with your suggested quick tests. What do I do with this info. now? Could something here be causing that message?

emac:~ alibaba$ sudo -v; sudo find -xf /.Trashes /Volumes /Library /private /Temp* \
> -type f -size +200000 -print0 | sudo xargs -0 ls -lohdSr

-rw------T 1 root wheel - 128M 8 Dec 18:16 /private/var/vm/swapfile2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin - 198M 18 Nov 2003 /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Tutorial/Movies/Our First Snowman.mov
-rw------T 1 root wheel - 256M 8 Dec 18:53 /private/var/vm/swapfile3
-rw------- 1 alibaba admin - 507M 8 Dec 03:59 /Library/Logs/Console/alibaba/console.log.1

emac:~ alibaba$ sudo -v; sudo find -xf /.Trashes /Volumes /Library /private /Temp* \
> -type f -size +200000 -print0 | sudo xargs -0 ls -lohdSr
-rw------T 1 root wheel - 128M 8 Dec 18:16 /private/var/vm/swapfile2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin - 198M 18 Nov 2003 /Library/Application Support/iDVD/Tutorial/Movies/Our First Snowman.mov
-rw------T 1 root wheel - 256M 8 Dec 18:53 /private/var/vm/swapfile3
-rw------- 1 alibaba admin - 507M 8 Dec 03:59 /Library/Logs/Console/alibaba/console.log.1
emac:~ alibaba$ 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'
24K /Volumes
du: /.Spotlight*: No such file or directory
0B /.Trashes
509M /Library/Logs
18M /private/var/log
2.2M /private/var/spool
3.0M /private/var/db
514M /private/var/vm
20M /private/var/tmp
4.0K /private/tmp
0B /Temporary Items
emac:~ alibaba$

alisontm,

The Tips & Hints forum isn't for posts requesting troubleshooting assistance; if you let us know what version of OS X you're running, we'll move your post to the appropriate troubleshooting forum.

Thanks.

Ooops, sorry about that , just got going with what I was reading and trying out. OS is Panther. Thanks.

Updating my two "quickie one-liners" (above) for Leopard:

#1) Find files over 100 megs inside the usual suspects:

sudo find -xf /.Trashes /Volumes /Library /private \
/.Temp* -type f -size +200000 -exec ls -lOhdSr {} +


#2) Measure sizes of the usual suspects (plus Spotlight's index):

for f in /Volumes /.Spotlight* /.Trashes /Library/Logs /private/{var/\
{log,spool,db,vm,folders,tmp},tmp} /.Temp*; do sudo du -hsx "$f"; done

[once again: they don't search everywhere... just in hidden areas difficult to "see" normally, but statistically prone to bloat.]
Uptdated @ 2:27AM to include Leopard's new -Caches- and -Tmp- directories, deep inside /var/folders (one set for each user).

Along with the fine utilities already mentioned (Baseline, WhatSize, DiskSweeper, etc),
there are also two freewares worthy of consideration: GrandPerspective & JDiskReport.

I don't think anyone has mentioned eliminating duplicate files. I use Chipmunk for this, but there are other apps that do the same thing.

Updated URL:

iDisk Syncing takes up more hard drive space than expected in Mac OS X 10.5

If there is ever a revision of this article, it is most likely to be found somewhere at www.finetunedmac.com .