Thx to Chris Thompson & Aaron Hill for the info.
It appears that 40 messages is in deed the limit (I had some other junk there) and yes, it is deleting the oldest message to make room for a new one.
What confused me was the man page in that it seem to imply, as Chris also pointed out, that only "undelivered" messages are kept around in this directory.
Anyway, I'm not going to worry any more ;-), I've checked my logs and NetApp Autosupport IS getting my filer weekly reports. This was DOT 6.4.2P6
Thx again. George
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- George Kahler e-mail: george@yorku.ca Sr. Systems Administrator humans: (416) 736-2100 x.22699 Computing and Network Services machines: (416) 736-5830 Ontario, Canada, M3J-1P3
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 18:58:39 +0000 (GMT), Chris Thompson cet1@cus.cam.ac.uk wrote:
george@YorkU.CA (George Kahler) writes:
I have around 50 or so entries in ./etc/log/autosupport directory on all of my filers dating back to July '04.
Does anyone know if this is something that can be safely purged ? Why is it being accumulated ?
BTW, autosupport is enabled and is working correctly.
I believe that ONTAP never deletes old messages from this directory until the limit on their number is reached.
The na_autosupport(8) man page [6.5.3] says
< To accommodate multiple delivery methods and destinations < and to preserve time dependent values, the outgoing < autosupport messages are now spooled in /etc/log/autosup- < port. Autosupport processing will attempt to deliver all < (currently undelivered) messages until the autosup- < port.retry.count has been reached or until subsequent < autosupport messages "fill the spool" such that the oldest < (undelivered) messages are forced to be dropped. The spool < size is currently 40 messages.
That would seem to imply that only "undelivered" messages stick around in the directory, but that isn't what actually happens.
However, the limit of 40 does seem to work, with the oldest being deleted to make room. I am surprised you see as many as 50. Which version of ONTAP are you running? Are counting the "YYYYMMDDHHMM.N" files and the "YYYYMMDDHHMM.N.files" sub-directories separately?
It must be fairly safe to empty the directory, as that is one of the things that happens when you set "options autosupport.content minimal"!
-- Chris Thompson Email: cet1@cam.ac.uk