Send a notification when system disables remote image downloading?

AI-generated summary

Users Canapin and Jonathan5 discuss whether Discourse should send notifications when the system automatically disables remote image downloading due to low disk space. Canapin reports not receiving any notification despite the setting being disabled for months, while Jonathan5 confirms receiving a personal message after upgrading, which explained the issue and suggested running ./launcher cleanup to reclaim space (23.09GB in their case). Canapin questions why they didn’t see such a message and finds the notification content clear, but Jonathan5 suggests it could be improved by linking to documentation or relevant forum topics for better user guidance. The discussion implies that notifications may only be triggered after upgrades or under specific conditions, leaving some users unaware of the setting change.

Hi!

I strugged to understand why the remote images weren’t downloaded anymore on my forum.

I finally saw this in the logs:

User Action Subject When Details
system change site setting download_remote_images_to_local Jul 22 New: false
Previous: true
Remote images download was disabled because there wasn’t enough disk space available.

However, I don’t recall having any notification about this.

If no notification is sent, in my opinion, it should be the case (and maybe it should be the case whenever a setting changes without any admin action). If I just missed it… You can just close this topic and do a Nelson-like laugh at me. :sweat_smile:

4 Likes

I think there is a message now, but it could be improved.

I received this personal message today, after upgrading the forum:

Downloading remote images disabled

The download_remote_images_to_local setting was disabled because the disk space limit at download_remote_images_threshold was reached.

The solution for me was:

cd /var/discourse
./launcher cleanup

(Total reclaimed space: 23.09GB)

I wonder whether the message could explain something about the problem and potential solutions.

1 Like

That’s funny you bump this topic, because I was reading it again this morning.

I actually (again) encountered the same issue yesterday.

I noticed that download_remote_images_to_local was set to false for 3 months on my instance, but however, this time again, I don’t recall having seen a warning. :thinking:

I’m not sure why. I looked in my inbox, but couldn’t find any related message, including in the archives.

I didn’t see a similar message on my instance but let’s ignore this.

What is unclear in the message you had? It seems pretty straightforward to me. As well as for the solution: free some disk space.

3 Likes

Perhaps it was similar for me and the message only got sent today because I’d updated to the latest version of Discourse. (Edit – just checked and the relevant log entry was made when upgrading today.)

I didn’t say it is unclear. I believe it could be improved. It could link to the documentation, if there is any, or to a forum topic.

2 Likes