1. Trim log files find / var - name "*.log" \( \( - size + 50M - mtime + 7 \) - o - mtime + 30 \) - exec truncate {} -- size 0 \; This will truncate any *.log files on the volume /var that are either older than 7 days and greater than 50M or older than 30 days. 2. Cleanup YUM cache The simple command to cleanup yum caches: yum clean all Note that the above command will not remove everything related to yum . For instance, metadata for disabled repositories will not be affected. You may want to free up space taken by orphaned data from disabled or removed repositories: rm - rf / var / cache / yum Also, when you accidentally run yum through a regular user (forgot sudo ), yum will create user-cache. So let’s delete that too: rm - rf / var / tmp / yum -* 3. Remove orphan packages Check existing orphan packages package - cleanup -- quiet -- leaves Confirm removing orphan packages Now, if happy with suggestions given by the previous command, run: package - ...