NameNode edit logs - purging/Best practises

[#1]

I see edit logs created for every 2 minute interval @"/data/hadoop/hdfs/namenode/current" directory. Is there a best practice to maintain the edit logs in terms of purging.

Also, we have a problem where Namenode fails to start and we use the following post "ttp://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2012/05/namenode-recovery-tools-for-the-hadoop-distributed-file-system/" to recover it. Is there something to do with the edits here.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@Bharath N, you don't need to purge edit log files. HDFS deletes them automatically when they are no longer needed. I recommend not touching any edit log files since accidentally deleting the wrong file could lead to data loss.

For your NameNode start problem, I can't say anything without more data. You want to engage Hortonworks support for this problem, if you have a support contract. Else you can post the error message/exception here and we may be able to point you in the right direction.

[#3]

Make sure your SecondaryNamenode, or standby Namenode is running it will keep checkpointing and removing old edit logs.