Anyone else suffering from /var/folders filling up the internal disk

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Anyone else suffering from /var/folders filling up the internal disk

I'm using "sips" to scale 1000s images and as my script runs I see /var/folders/.... get bigger and bigger until it (and the Mail app) crashes due to no space on my internal disk. I then have to reboot to clear var, which was 40 GB large at the time.

Not only does "sips" not clean up after itself but I should be able to use export TMPDIR, but "sips" ignores it and keeps writing to /var/folder/...

Has anyone tried creating a symbolic link from /var to an external drive?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 13.6

Posted on Nov 24, 2023 9:56 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 27, 2023 3:56 PM in response to colinpearse

Is the scale a constant across all images? For example, are all images scaling 50%? If so, try Automator instead of sips. I am guessing sips must need a temp location to process the image. With Automator, I never noticed it consuming temp space as it simply seems to overwrite the existing file.

Open Automator, create a new Application, and add a Scale Images tile. Set "By percentage" and enter the value. Save that and now you have a drag and drop applet. Grab your images and drop them on top of the app.

Test this on sample files before working on production files. As mentioned, this edits the existing files, it does not create a second copy.

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Answer 2

colinpearse Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 28, 2023 4:54 AM in response to Strontium90

Thanks for your response. In the end, I asked GPT4 and it gave my a Python script that does all the things I required from sips, plus control over memory management and temporary files, plus it gave me a few extra features that I didn't even know I needed!

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Anyone else suffering from /var/folders filling up the internal disk

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