Ericsworld reported their Discourse forum, only a month old with ~15,000 posts, ran out of disk space (39GB/39GB), causing a 502 error and failing Docker operations. Attempts to clean via ./launcher cleanup failed due to no space. JagWaugh suggested checking backups and restore schemas; Ericsworld confirmed fresh install and deleted old backups, freeing 150MB, then successfully ran ./launcher cleanup, reclaiming 16GB. Despite rebuilding, site access remained broken until a second rebuild fixed it, leaving disk at 83% (32GB/39GB). robbyoconnor and JagWaugh advised checking upload and backup sizes — backups were 5.9GB, uploads 5GB. sam recommended ncdu to find space hogs; Ericsworld found leftover backups and considered disabling Discourse backups in favor of DigitalOcean snapshots. fefrei and robbyoconnor recommended excluding uploads from backups or storing backups offsite (e.g., Amazon S3) for consistency. mpalmer endorsed offsite backups. thimiraonline confirmed sudo ./launcher cleanup worked for them, reclaiming 5.4GB. Community consensus: monitor backups/uploads, use offsite storage, and consider scaling disk space.
My forum is 1 month old, ~15000 posts… I tried checking it tonight and received a 502 error. I then reloaded my Droplet and tried a ./launcher rebuild and was met with a
"785ef3cb0f4bbe86b21afde2620a966a63e03427e89484b0946a94d1bb34-init: no space left on device.
See '/usr/bin/docker run --help'.
Your Docker installation is not working correctly"
So I did a df -h and saw that my disk was completely full:
I did try that. I get the same out of space message when trying to cleanup:
./launcher: line 96: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
./launcher: line 97: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
./launcher: line 96: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
./launcher: line 97: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
./launcher: line 96: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
./launcher: line 97: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
./launcher: line 96: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
./launcher: line 97: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
/usr/bin/docker: Error response from daemon: mkdir /var/lib/docker/aufs/mnt/6dfedd25fd4d18e682780fc168b2f42ad42b1fee8a4f21b7728f8b4ecf36e51b-init: no space left on device.
See '/usr/bin/docker run --help'.
Your Docker installation is not working correctly
This doesn’t seem normal for a forum my size to take up 39GB?
My instance was a fresh install. You read my mind on the automatic backups. I was trying to figure out what I could remove to clear enough space for the ./launcher cleanup to work. So I went into /var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default and deleted a few of the old backups which cleared about 150mb of space.
I then was able to run ./launcher cleanup and that netted me back 16GB of space. I still have 24GB used up which seems like quite a lot for a forum my size.
Now my other problem is, I did a reboot on my droplet and ever since I did that, the initial 502 Gateway issue has turned into a Failed to open page issue. I still can’t get access to my Discourse, even after do a ./launcher rebuild
Now that you’ve enough headroom, what about apt-get update and apt-get upgrade? Once your droplet went into tilt mode not only the updates to discourse will have failed, but also any to the underlying OS.
Can you see /logs and /sidekiq? What about /safemode?
Sorry if my answers are a bit generic, I’m still on my first coffee.
I don’t think it’s normal for a forum my size to be using up 32GB like this… or I guess it is normal. DigitalOcean’s Volume Block Storage isn’t available in my server’s region, I will need to look into that to add in more space.
Thanks, I installed ncdu and ran it on root. Turns out there was still a couple extra backups in the /shared/ folder that didn’t get removed. I think I need to disable Discourse backups due to their disk size and just rely on DigitalOcean Snapshots instead…?
Instead of fully disabling backups, I’d just exclude uploads from them. Snapshots will certainly have your uploads, but might have an inconsistent database.
