Subject: Disk is filling up with large files. How can I clean?

From: Mikael Petterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2024 11:06:04 +0000

Hi,

I find our disk is filling up.

sudo find /var/lib -type f -size +100M -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }'
/var/lib/rpm/Packages: 278M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16583: 392M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16588: 173M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16633: 106M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16644: 179M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16659: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16662: 438M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16665: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16667: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16668: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16780: 466M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16786: 182M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16788: 163M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16789: 315M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16790: 126M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16665.2: 403M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.7: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.6: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.9: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.8: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16659.6: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16659.4: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16659.5: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16668.3: 586M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.10: 458M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16659.1: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.2: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16659.2: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16668.1: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.3: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16659.3: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.4: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16665.1: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.5: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16586.1: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16668.2: 1.0G
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/16667.1: 741M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/4652676: 502M
/var/lib/pgsql/12/data/base/16384/4652688: 155M

How can I clean up?

What can I do to clean up. We are using pgsql 12.

Br,

//Mikael

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2024 08:24:38 -0700

> I find our disk is filling up.

Query the pg_stat_activity view:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-ACTIVITY-VIEW

and look for rows that have with state showing 'idle in transaction'.

Report back what you find.

You should also check out this post:

https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/reasons-why-vacuum-wont-remove-dead-rows/

-- 
Adrian Klaver
[email-masked]

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From: Greg Sabino Mullane <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2024 12:01:17 -0400

> sudo find /var/lib -type f -size +100M -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print
...

Those files only add up to about 30GB. That's pretty small these days :
time for a bigger disk? Or perhaps the space is elsewhere: probably want to
do something like
sudo find / -xdev -maxdepth 2 -exec du -sh {} \; | grep -E 'G|M' | sort -g

Cheers,
Greg

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From: Sergey Fukanchik <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2024 19:45:52 +0300

Another possibility is orphaned files.
See https://www.dbi-services.com/blog/can-there-be-orphaned-data-files-in-postgresql/
and https://github.com/bdrouvot/pg_orphaned
--
Sergey

On Wed, 9 Oct 2024 at 19:02, Greg Sabino Mullane <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 9, 2024 at 4:10 AM Mikael Petterson <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
> Those files only add up to about 30GB. That's pretty small these days : time for a bigger disk? Or perhaps the space is elsewhere: probably want to do something like

-- 
Sergey