Smarts NCM: How to clean up space consumed by postgres logs in the <VOYENCE_HOME>/db/controldb/data/pg_log
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Article ID: 303524
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Updated On:
Products
VMware Smart Assurance
Issue/Introduction
Symptoms:
How to clean up space consumed in Smarts Network Configuration Manager (Smarts NCM) environment by postgres logs in the <VOYENCE_HOME>/db/controldb/data/pg_log directory?
How to clean up logs created by postgres in Smarts NCM environment?
Smarts NCM <VOYENCE_HOME> directory is nearly full
Smarts NCM <VOYENCE_HOME>/db/controldb/data/pg_log directory is nearly full
Environment
VMware Smart Assurance - NCM
Cause
Postgres generates human readable log files generated for debugging and auditing purposes. These logs contain what they are configured to contain, and are often stored in pg_log, or in the system logs (/var/log/...) depending on your configuration.
Resolution
If you encounter this issue, you must manually delete the logs from the pg_log directory.
Additional Information
Postgres does not have a automation utility to clean up these logs. If the desire is to automate this, a cron job could be used.
There are three directories in a default $PGDATA directory when you create it which are named "pg_*log".
$PGDATA/pg_log is the default location for the database activity logs, which include error messages, query logging, and startup/shutdown messages
You can freely delete, rename, compress, and move files in pg_log without penalty, as long as the postgres user still has rights to write to the directory.
$PGDATA/pg_xlog is the PostgreSQL transaction log.
Deleting pg_xlog files may result in irrecoverable database corruption.
$PGDATA/pg_clog contains a log of transaction metadata.
Should you ever delete files from pg_clog, you might as well delete the entire database directory. There is no recovery from a missing clog.