I'm also affected by this issue some 2315 days after it was originally reported. My home server is running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and contains a 500GB system partition that was entirely filled by .xsession-errors in under 48 hours.
In my case, the file is full of the message "Authentication deferred - ignoring client message" which seems to indicate some issue with vino- server, but that's a separate point altogether. If a file is growing at a rate of 8GB/h, there is surely something seriously wrong with the host system! I only managed to find this issue because my disk space kept evaporating and I'm an advanced enough user to find a massive hidden file and then go looking for more information about said file. As of this moment, I'm still not even sure what to do to solve the actual issue that is causing the file to grow. The real purpose of this post is to attempt to chastise somebody into fixing this stupid bug once and for all. I understand the problem that this log file is attempting to solve, but there must be a better way of going about it. Why not rotate the file out after a reasonable size has been reached... say 100MB or so? If the file is already being cleared on every session restart, then the developers have demonstrated that they don't care too much about what's in it, as most folks restart their machines daily. If a file contains more than 1MB of the same log message over and over and over again, then as much information has been reported to the user as is available about that particular error. Another 450-some-odd gigs isn't going to help the situation, and may cause stability and security problems to boot. Better yet, if the file is getting this much traffic, why not inform the user that there may be a problem with his/her system? Again, I wouldn't be complaining on this very forum if I weren't an advanced user. I've installed Ubuntu on my mother in law's machine, and I can assure you that she wouldn't have any idea what to do if her laptop started complaining that it was low on disk space. If the gods are smiling, she might think to empty the recycle bin. Honestly guys, let's try and fix this one. It's getting ridiculous at this point. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gdm in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/60448 Title: .xsession-errors file grows out of control & saturates disk space Status in “gdm” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in “kdebase” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in “xinit” source package in Dapper: Won't Fix Bug description: Hi, I'm running Kubuntu Dapper, freshly dist-upgraded, on a Compaq Presario V2610CA laptop, with no particular esoteric configuration. In the past 2 weeks, my disk space has been saturated **TWICE**, i.e. up to 100% occ. on a 60 GB disk with 40 GB previously free, as reported by the "df -h" command (in fact app. 10 MB was still available, just enough to be able to boot/login!). The cause of these events is what seems an ever-growing .xsession-errors file in one user directory. i.e. /home/user. After a quick search on Google, I've found 2 similar reports (one concerning Dapper, the other OpenSuse): http://www.nabble.com/X-error-log-t1364627.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2005-10/msg00044.html However, I didn't find anything related to this problem on Launchpad... It 's quite possible that something is going wrong with my system and is filling the .xsession-errors file with various reports. I did not have the chance to pinpoint what's going wrong since my only concern was to prevent my system from completely crashing. That's why I deleted the file without trying to look at its content (my system was saturated to a point that I could not receive one simple e-mail, Kmail complaining about the lack of disk space...). The only thing I know is that since 2 weeks, I use more frequently Skype and I have created a second user account for my wife to be able to manger her e-mails with Kmail and browse the Web with Konqueror a little bit. Nothing so complex or heavy... Anyway, this report is not about what's going wrong with my system, but instead about the fact that an error-log file, like .xsession- errors, that is supposed to be useful to track problems, should not be the cause of a major critical problem like the lack of disk space! I don't know what would be a satifying solution, but in my case I've set up a script to erase this file in root and all users directory at each hour, by putting an executable file with this content in /etc/cron.hourly: rm /home/*/.xsession-errors* rm /root/.xsession-errors* Thanks for your attention. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+bug/60448/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
