How to Save Disk Space!


Are you stuck using an old overloaded UNIX server? Is it impossible to store all the files within your quota? Are you tired of having to continually compress and decompress files only to find out that you STILL fill up your account? Sick of putting files on a temporary partition only to have them deleted when the machine crashes or reboots? Then use /dev/null for all your storage needs! /dev/null never accidentally deletes files from the filesystem, never seems to fill up, giving you errors. In fact, once you move your files there, you'll never have to worry about them again!

Don't know what to do? It's easy--simply mv your files or directories like this:

mv filename /dev/null
  or
mv dirname /dev/null

And do a df to check, verifying that your files are taking up little or no space! See how unfilled the vast resources of /dev/null are? This incredible secret could save you lots of time. And moreover, advanced UNIX users, you can pipe your output there to avoid using lots of temp files!

unix18%110>df
Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/sd0a              23231    8178   12730    39%    /
/dev/sd0e             212631   63421  127947    33%    /usr
/dev/sd0f             236367  201846   10885    95%    /usr/vice/cache
/dev/null            2097144       0 2097144     0%    /dev/null
/dev/sd0g             135343      47  121762     0%    /usr/tmp
/dev/sd1a             118175   71283   35075    67%    /usr/contributed
/dev/sd1b             845470  769083       0   101%    /usr/local

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© 1996 by Todd C. Gleason