I run an old forum (~10 years, 200k posts) that has been running into some chronic disk issues. At the moment, we’re not in imminent danger of the lights going out, but we have reached the point where I’m getting daily messages about backups failing due to no disk space (the backup process itself seems to take like 10 gigabytes of disk, which fails if we already have a backup on-server). Is there anything I can do to stem this tide a little? I accept that disk space is one of those things I have to deal with as time goes on and do plan to upgrade eventually, but I’m wondering if there are other ways to buy time via compression, or just some cleanup of files that I haven’t thought to check. I have already run ./launcher cleanup (0B saved), and have attached a snapshot of the db stats. db_stats.txt (17.7 KB)

I’d start with a measurement: du -kx / | sort -n | tail -499 Probably also worth df and perhaps find / -xdev -ls|sort -n -k 2|tail -199 which might take a few minutes You might see one or more swapfiles so it’s worth checking if they are in use: swapon

After running a du, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary (the bulk of the data is in /var/docker and /var/lib, which is about what I’d expect). Do you have any advice for what might be worth checking out in those folders? My swap also looks normal (and not really enough to move the needle).

I can help if you show the data!

Of course, how silly of me. The output of du -cha --max-depth=2 /var | grep -E "M|G" 2.1M /var/backups 12K /var/discourse/README.md 2.2M /var/discourse/.git 2.7M /var/discourse 54M /var/lib/mlocate 36M /var/lib/dpkg 190M /var/lib/apt 18G /var/lib/docker 18G /var/lib 3.4M /var/log/btmp 1.2M /var/log/auth.log.3.gz 4.1G /var/log/journal 1.2M /var/log/auth.log.2.gz 42M /var/log/btmp.1 1.6M /var/log/auth.log.4.gz 7.9M /var/log/auth.log.1 6.5M /var/log/auth.log 4.1G /var/log 1.2M /var/cache/man 312M /var/cache/apt 2.8M /var/cache/snapd 4.9M /var/cache/debconf 320M /var/cache 46G /var/docker/shared 46G /var/docker 68G /var 68G total DIgging deeper into /var/docker/shared and /var/lib/docker: 15G /var/docker/shared/standalone/postgres_data 6.8G /var/docker/shared/standalone/backups 14G /var/docker/shared/standalone/uploads 43M /var/docker/shared/standalone/redis_data 69M /var/docker/shared/standalone/log 12G /var/docker/shared/standalone/postgres_data_old 14M /var/docker/shared/standalone/letsencrypt 46G /var/docker/shared/standalone 46G /var/docker/shared 46G total 17M /var/lib/docker/image/overlay2 17M /var/lib/docker/image 14G /var/lib/docker/overlay2/ed229eed209ffa6339adc9de9033c12487732c74572a3dc608eb32d720d1837c 1.2G /var/lib/docker/overlay2/7448f4eb6c5a9e09b0a5537aa454c30221ab95314418eac9078c7c774de784e2 2.4G /var/lib/docker/overlay2/8a7ca976e2c8b362302c2abb95d306520206bf3e6125672b160b19e150d1f914 88M /var/lib/docker/overlay2/c6cd5a3006efb2457f3bba70450a85c42f53bfc7cdc3416fb6cfb5990e2eed72 1.1G /var/lib/docker/overlay2/9f8a463bdc03f518d6f25a7c11873122bf858a266fd6ca40ea19dfb4a78e1f8d 18G /var/lib/docker/overlay2 18G /var/lib/docker 18G total Offhand, postgres_data_old looks suspicious. Is that safe to clean up?

Disk space cleanup

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Ed_S (Ed S) April 3, 2024, 9:05pm 6

Yes, it’s fine to delete postgres_data_old.

I find it difficult to read the output you pasted: I suggested particular forms of commands because I’ve found them useful.

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Disk space cleanup

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