backup / snapshots retention

[rosano]

my backblaze storage bill seems to be increasing every month and i think it's due to cloudron backups. my retention policy is 1 month but it seems like older backups / snapshots are not getting deleted:

i'm confused also looking at this directory as the main folder seems time-based and the subfolder /snapshot seems app-based. this subfolder seems to also have many old versions beyond retention policy.

manually cleaning this up is very cumbersome in backblaze as their checkboxes are not html but pictures or something, so one must literally click all of them. i tried cloudron's 'cleanup backups' which seems to only consider ones within my 1 month retention policy. not sure if it's aware of the files beyond that.

Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-21-040001-622/app_XXXXX_v2.26.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-20-100002-716/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: preserveSecs
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-20-040001-314/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-19-040001-285/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-18-040001-307/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-17-040001-202/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-16-040001-480/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-15-040001-449/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-14-040001-497/app_XXXXX_v2.25.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-13-100004-538/app_XXXXX_v2.24.0 keep/discard: keepWithinSecs
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-13-040001-279/app_XXXXX_v2.24.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-12-040001-348/app_XXXXX_v2.24.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-11-040001-615/app_XXXXX_v2.24.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-10-040001-315/app_XXXXX_v2.24.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-09-040001-222/app_XXXXX_v2.24.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner applyBackupRetention: 2025-01-08-040001-314/app_XXXXX_v2.24.0 keep/discard: referenced
Feb 07 08:01:17 box:backupcleaner cleanupAppBackups: applying retention for appId 1bba7e1f-a2f5-4bd9-b2be-3a60d0153669 retention: {"keepLatest":true,"keepWithinSecs":2592000}

i didn't find any solutions in these related topics:

• Backups before retention policy not being deleted. Bug?
• Scaleway backups retained > retention policy
• Backup retention time

any suggestions?

[jdaviescoates]

@rosano have you read https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#retention-policy ?

eg

For installed apps and box backups, the latest backup is always retained regardless of the policy.

An App backup that was created right before an app updates is also marked as special and persisted for 3 weeks.

Might those explain some of what you're seeing?

[rosano]

i gather that there may be some things left beyond the retention policy, but it seems like everything or many/most things are kept forever. some of the dates in /snapshots go back to june/july of last year, over 6 months, and i have maybe only ever made a special manual snapshot or said 'keep this' once or twice. i expect most of these should be deleted by now, do i have the wrong idea?

[jdaviescoates]

@rosano I honestly don't know but it does sound like you've got stuff you shouldn't have.

I guess that could happen if your set-up/ config changed at some point - perhaps Cloudron lost access to the older ones for some reason, or something?

I've never used Backblaze, but lots of people on here seem to have add issues with them in the past...

This could well the post you're looking for:

@ericdrgn said in Easy way to "reset" backups...:

Change "file lifecycle" to "keep only the last version"?

https://forum.cloudron.io/post/28766

For more clues see e.g. these previous threads (there may be more but I quickly found these):
https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/4776/easy-way-to-reset-backups
https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/5283/backblaze-cleanup-backups-not-functioning

[joseph]

Did you change the backup provider in the middle? The backup code loses track of old backups in previous providers when you switch . If the service or server also goes unreachable for days, the backup logic loses track of things (i.e it removes things from the database and assumes stuff is gone remotely).

For the moment, you can just manually delete all the old files and see if it grown again. There were some fixed around the time of 8.1 , so it might be bugs from older cloudron version as well.

[rosano]

@jdaviescoates i didn't know about the lifecycle settings, tried it and it reduced total size by 90% after a few days

@joseph i think this was around the time i switched from aws to backblaze, but i understand it didn't transfer pre-existing backups, only starting fresh, although i could be wrong. will try deleting everything if needed, but so far the previous solution works for me