Enormous space use for Ubuntu and Docker...

[miednr]

My Ubuntu takes 309 GB, my Docker takes 47 GB. What could be the reason for that and what could/should I do about it? I do not save any backups in my /ext4.

[james]

Hello @miednr

Did you check your system where this storage usage is from?
You could run:

du -h -d 1 /

or use a tool like ncdu to explore this disk and the usage.
When you find what is using so much we can analyze it further.

[miednr]

Hello @james, I am investigating with ncdu now. Thank you!

It's 9.000.000 files (566 GiB) and still counting up. I guess, it could be because I am using sshfs (rsync) for saving backups to a Hetzner Storage Box. Does this backup method do save the backups additionally to the local drive? Rsync is synchronizing the data, but it seems that the full backup is also saved many times to the local ssd.

I hope the scan will finish soon, because my ssd seems to be quite full.

But, I see, that it's scanning the storage boxes now. But the issue remains. My ext4 is 4/5 full. But, my usual daily full backup is "only" 23 GiB.

[james]

Hello @miednr
You can limit the scan from ncdu to not scan certain paths.
See: https://linux.die.net/man/1/ncdu

[miednr]

Okay, I can now see, that a WordPress-Instance, I installed yesterday, takes 279 GiB and additionally var/libs/docker/overlay2 takes 47 GiB and var/libs/docker/volumes takes 12 GiB. That all seem quite much. What could be the reason?

Yesterday, I did a restore of a WordPress-Instance to a new Instance of WordPress. It may be possible, that I was entering the wrong path first, and it did "restore" not only the WordPress-Instance, but also Ubuntu and all the other 18 apps to this container. Is this possible? The second try did help, so WordPress works, but the SSD seems to be quite full and my nightly backups did fail, too.

What could I do? Should I delete the whole container? Or may I "repair it" by deleting obsolete files?

[james]

Hello @miednr

@miednr said in Enormous space use for Ubuntu and Docker...:

var/libs/docker/overlay2 takes 47 GiB and var/libs/docker/volumes takes 12 GiB. That all seem quite much. What could be the reason?

I can not evaluate if this disk usage is appropriate or not without knowledge about what apps you have installed.
But does not look to bad.

@miednr said in Enormous space use for Ubuntu and Docker...:

It may be possible, that I was entering the wrong path first, and it did "restore" not only the WordPress-Instance, but also Ubuntu and all the other 18 apps to this container. Is this possible?

If you used the normal Cloudron app restore, this would not be possible.
A Cloudron app backup does only include the app data and not the whole system.

@miednr said in Enormous space use for Ubuntu and Docker...:

What could I do? Should I delete the whole container? Or may I "repair it" by deleting obsolete files?

If a WordPress grows to such an extent without our knowledge, I would advise verifying what is happening.
This is unusual behaviour and might be a hint that something is wrong with your WordPress, may even be compromised.

[miednr]

Hello @james

Thanks a lot for your attention to this issue. My Apps do count 23 GiB in total. So, my WordPress is only 2 GiB. I can tell you, that my WordPress has not been compromised. But, it happened, that I entered "/folder" as backup path in the restore dialogue without the full restore path to WordPress. Then, Cloudron did not restore the WordPress-App alone. It went trough all the apps I have, downloaded them... and kind of installed them somehow. The data is saved in /home/yellowtent/appsdata/APP-ID ... There I find several copies of my general backup:

21.2 GiB [##############################] /snapshot
21.2 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-13-010000-590
21.2 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-18-010000-559
21.2 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-17-010000-635
21.2 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-16-010000-682
21.2 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-15-010000-589
21.2 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-12-010000-697
21.2 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-14-010000-616
20.9 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-11-010000-627
20.9 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-10-010000-615
20.8 GiB [############################# ] /2026-02-09-123024-982
17.0 GiB [######################## ] /2026-02-13-185621-628
17.0 GiB [######################## ] /2026-02-17-230004-017
...
..
.

Is it safe, to delete these files manually?