Why is /var so big?

[Felipe Alfaro Solana]

On 20 Mar 2005, at 06:11, Jephthah wrote:

> Without looking into it too deeply, I would guess your /var/cache is
> previously viewed webpages.  And it's the only thing that is really
> causing you grief in /var...  The rest consumes a trival amount.
>
> So just do a  "rm -rf /var/cache" to wipe it out.
>
> You can make this command an alias and/or add it to your startup script
> or even a regularly occuring cron action if you like.

I wouldn't do that, as it would wipe out directories like those being 
used by alchemist or samba. I would take a look at /var/cache/yum, as 
it seems it could be the biggest of them.