This morning I noticed the /var filesystem was at 100% capacity on bonzo, leaving MySQL somewhat hosed. Upon poking around in /var (which, sadly, I only made about 300MB) I removed a CVSUp catalog for the FreeBSD src tree that was taking up alot of space, and with the time that bought, sought a permanent fix.

First, I see three big files in /var/db/mysql: ib_logfile0, ib_logfile1, and ibdata1. Upon a bit of googling, I found these were the tablespace and log files for the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL, somewhat akin to the data and log device files SQL Server uses.

The problem, though, is that none of my databases use InnoDB. The MyISAM storage engine is fine for my needs, and considerably less complicated. So, I poked around for the my.cnf config file that’s supposed to be in /var/db/mysql, but it’s not there, suggesting the InnoDB stuff was compiled in. At any rate, I moved the files elsewhere and made sure my databases were still working, which they are if you’re reading this.

Longer term, I need to grow the /var filesystem…