# /var/cache/chef/checksums is full of files

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/var-cache-chef-checksums-is-full-of-files/1641>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [December 7, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/var-cache-chef-checksums-is-full-of-files/1641 "2010-12-07T16:44:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Le\_Huy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e68b1a/32.png) [@Le\_Huy](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Le_Huy)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/var-cache-chef-checksums-is-full-of-files/1641/1 "2010-12-07T16:44:39Z")

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After running chef-client for a while my /var/cache/chef/checksums has  
more than 200 K of files and chef-client fails

Can I remove these files?

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**Author:** ![kallistec](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/kallistec/32/23_2.png) [@kallistec](https://discourse.chef.io/u/kallistec)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/var-cache-chef-checksums-is-full-of-files/1641/2 "2010-12-07T16:53:39Z")

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Ohai!

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 8:44 AM, [le.huy@ingdirect.es](mailto:le.huy@ingdirect.es) wrote:

> After running chef-client for a while my /var/cache/chef/checksums has more  
> than 200 K of files and chef-client fails
> 
> Can I remove these files?

Yes, it's completely safe, they're just there as an optimization, the  
next chef run may need to re-checksum some files, but this isn't  
really a big deal.

Chef 0.9.12 will clean these up automatically. As I mentioned in the  
release announcement, the first time you run Chef after upgrading,  
Chef can use a lot of CPU cleaning these out if you have that many, so  
it's a good idea to remove them manually if you're concerned about the  
impact on your production apps.

Also, be careful cleaning the checksums on Chef server: your cookbook  
files are stored in a different directory also named "checksums" and  
you don't want to delete those.

HTH,  
Dan DeLeo

> * * *
> 
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