I have update script for my computer here. The last action in the script is to check the /var/ directory.

du -sh /var/* | sort -rh | head -n 10

I saw that

• 4,0G    /var/lib
• 2,2G    /var/spool

What is /var/spool

/var/spool contains the printer jobs, crash reports and e-mails I check what is the content of the path /var/spool, and I found the folder „abrt“

What is abrt?

In the manual, page stands:

abrt – Manage problems handled by ABRT

On the official website of abrt:

ABRT is a set of tools to help users detect and report application crashes. Its main purpose is to ease the process of reporting an issue and finding a solution.

How to check what it has crashed in the past?

with the command

abrt list

I could see what kind of programs had problems (crashes) in the past. Each of the crashes creates a Core Dump that is a snapshot of the RAM. This is why the files are so big In my case (it is a shortened list):

sven@fedora:/var/spool$ abrt list

• Id           ed18d3f  
• Component    audacity-freeworld  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-03-30 08:33:10  
• User id      1000 (sven)  

  

• Id           7b6f030  
• Component    rygel  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-01 19:53:48  
• User id      1000 (sven)

  

• Id           57b299b  
• Component    kdenlive  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-07 19:52:04  
• User id      1000 (sven)

• Id           d53a91b  
• Component    kdenlive  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-07 19:57:23  
• User id      1000 (sven)  

  

• Id           55de27f  
• Component    nautilus  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-16 05:30:47  
• User id      1000 (sven)

  

• Id           859cabb  
• Component    tracker-miners  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-16 07:39:07  
• User id      1000 (sven)

• Id           e85c218  
• Component    gnome-shell  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-17 05:34:18  
• User id      1000 (sven)  

 

• Id           0550766  
• Component    kdenlive  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-19 06:25:59  
• User id      1000 (sven) 

 

• Id           1f4ed0d  
• Component    gnome-shell  
• Count        2  
• Time         2025-04-22 05:24:45  
• User id      1000 (sven) 

 

• Id           f745bc9  
• Component    gnome-shell  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-22 09:46:40  
• User id      1000 (sven) 

 

• Id           f41dabd  
• Component    mlt  
• Count        5  
• Time         2025-04-22 18:47:29  
• User id      1000 (sven) 

 

• Id           58ce6b2  
• Component    kdenlive  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-04-24 08:19:51  
• User id      1000 (sven) 

  

• Id           63c5d78  
• Component    gnome-shell  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-05-02 08:02:40  
• User id      1000 (sven)

  

• Id           17929c3  
• Component    mutter  
• Count        1  
• Time         2025-05-02 08:03:04  
• User id      1000 (sven)

To remove the entries and the files in /var/spool/abrt

You can delete it but

sven@fedora:/var/spool/abrt$ sudo abrt-cli auto-purge
usage: abrt-cli [-h] [-a] [-v] COMMAND …
abrt-cli: error: argument COMMAND: invalid choice: ‚auto-purge‘ (choose from backtrace, bt, gdb, info, i, list, ls, remove, rm, report, e, retrace, status, st)

sudo abrt-cli auto-purge

does not work

You have to delete every entry manually with

sudo abrt remove

Automatic command could be

sudo abrt list | awk ‚NR>1 {print $1}‘ | sudo xargs -I {} abrt-cli remove {}

Checking after the deleting of /var/spool/abrt

After this action I only have

/var/spool = 1.3 M instead of 2.2 GB.