How to interpret the retention policy?

[nottheend]

My backup interval is daily 3 am and for Retention Policy it is

3 daily, 4 weekly, 6 monthly

I thought it means I will effectively have backups of the last 3 days, older than 3 days there are only backups 1 per week (up to 4 weeks) and older than 4 weeks there is only 1 per month.

Is that wrong?

Because I see more like 4/5 days daily, and there is 30th June, 1st and 2nd July in a row although more than 3 days ago.

Today (= 15/07/2023)
Yesterday (=14/07/2023)
13/07/2023
12/07/2023
11/07/2023
09/07/2023
02/07/2023
01/07/2023
30/06/2023
25/06/2023
31/05/2023

Urgency and importance of this question is low for me, but curious.

[warg]

I face the same issue: Some of the options is not clear to me from the wording. It would be better if you could just pass the values as keyboard input as like as you wish. I think the option I look for doesn't exist in the predefined options.

[girish]

@nottheend said in How to interpret the retention policy?:

I thought it means I will effectively have backups of the last 3 days, older than 3 days there are only backups 1 per week (up to 4 weeks) and older than 4 weeks there is only 1 per month.

This is what it means. There's some additional rules to go with the retention policy with regards to stopped apps and app updates. Please see https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#retention-policy . If you go into each directory, can you check if those are "full backups" (has all the apps and box and mail) or just a single app backup . If it's the latter, it's because of an app update most likely.

[girish]

@warg The API is very flexible. The options in the UI are hardcoded for simplicity - https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box/-/blob/master/dashboard/src/views/backups.js#L38 . What more standard options would you like to see ?

[crazybrad]

@girish I am just finding this thread. I would suggest adding these options:
{ name: '7 daily, 4 weekly, 3 monthly', value: { keepDaily: 7, keepWeekly: 4, keepMonthly: 3 }},
{ name: '7 daily, 4 weekly, 6 monthly', value: { keepDaily: 7, keepWeekly: 4, keepMonthly: 6 }},

The first option is a common backup cycle (I think) and the second option allows for 3 more months of retention (and is halfway between the first and the current 12 month option).