this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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    Well, not a noob, more like an idiot πŸ˜‚ EDIT: Yes, on the same drive as my Home folder, etc. And yes, technically they're snapshots, not backups.

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    [–] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago

    I had a bunch of old nix generations I wasn't using, cleaned those up and got hundeeds of gigabytes of free space

    [–] hansolo@lemmy.today 81 points 1 week ago

    If it makes you fell any better, after doing a fresh install, I tried a "finally finished setting everything up" backup and was immediately out of space.

    Turns out it was saving backups to my boot sector. 🀦🀦🀦🀦🀦🀦

    [–] xilophor@lemmy.world 72 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

    500 GiB syslog

    I've been in a similar situation

    edit: For context, there was a bug with the graphics driver that was putting out an error every frame, at 200+ fps... needless to say, I could actively see the log growing in size

    [–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)
    [–] alecsargent@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago

    right? what the hell?

    [–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    This is what confuses me about Linux defaults, why would it let them grow that large?

    We can tune logging settings to resonable values for the max size and everything, it just doesn't come that way for some reason.

    [–] faerbit@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 week ago

    If you don't use archaic technologies it actually does. systemd-journald is limited to max(10% FS size, 4GB) per default.

    [–] Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Well, Linux is also made for servers and super computers, and just imagine it refusing to keep logs because the file's too large

    [–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Well it's better than a server locking up from a full disk.

    [–] Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    But I think it's better for it to fail from expected behavior vs unexpected behavior. Your storage being full is very transparent and expected, but that a file reaches max size and starts cutting off is unexpected and would surprise a lot of people.

    I myself use supercomputers and the log files can get into a lot of GB, and I would hate it if it just cut off at some point.

    I mean that's fair, but a supercomputer would be heavily customized so disabling log limits would be part of that if needed.

    [–] rumba@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

    Mmmm somebody need some log rotate in their life.

    Oh my production s***'s on point but all the Dave and QA s*** I need at least one failure before I get around to doing law rotate. I guess I should spend the time to make the ansible job.

    [–] PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 45 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    we are all noobs in some regard. I've been using linux for private and work for 3 years and I don't know shit about tineshift. linux is such a diverse ecosystem and there's so many places to make mistakes and learn. It never stops. I fully expect to be bricking my machine on accident well into my 60s

    [–] lapislazuli@sopuli.xyz 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

    Learning about new things is the best thing about Linux. I keep a folder with screenshots and saved html pages for all the fixes, workarounds and settings I've accumulated over the two years I've used Linux on my desktop. Highly recommend keeping a similar folder.

    [–] pool_spray_098@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Yup.

    Every time I fix something difficult I document it in great detail in Obsidian. It's a good feeling of, ''I'll never have to be confused by this problem again''.

    I reference it constantly too, so it isn't a waste of time. The waste of time would be not doing it.

    [–] iopq@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

    I just edit my configuration.nix and commit it to source control. The commit message is the documentation. If I'm feeling extra generous I'd add a comment

    [–] elvith@feddit.org 14 points 1 week ago

    Everytime I stumble upon something it take some quick notes and put "I should start blogging this" on my bucket list. Then immediately forget about the blogging part until I take the next note...

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    [–] Tja@programming.dev 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    I have been using Linux for over 20 years and this post is the first time I've heard about timeshift. I use Arch, btw.

    [–] PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    ironically, arch users are the only users who I've heard talking about timeshift because apparently its the best way to roll back after an update breaks sth?

    [–] Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago

    Timeshift plus the package that automatically takes a snapshot on system update is so clutch.

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    [–] BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    pip cache is another common culprit, I've seen up to 50GB

    [–] elvith@feddit.org 18 points 1 week ago

    node_modules has entered the chat

    [–] muhyb@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago

    There was once a 220 GB log file on my pi-hole server. Probably was a bug though.

    [–] sirico@feddit.uk 22 points 1 week ago

    BTRFS + Snapper + BTRFS assistant has been pretty good for me

    [–] 30p87@feddit.org 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    "Backups" to the same disk?

    [–] RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Personally i use them in case an update messes stuff up. So i can restore it back.

    [–] 30p87@feddit.org 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    So not backups, but snapshots.

    [–] lapislazuli@sopuli.xyz 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

    Yeah, snapshots. It would make more sense to store them on a different drive, but I can't add an additional drive into my PC (it's a prebuilt so I'm waiting until I can afford a new PC) and I can't be bothered with saving them to an external hard drive.

    [–] chellomere@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

    To be fair, I wouldn't consider storing it on one additional drive in the same PC to be backup either. One theft, lightning strike, fire or even just a stupid mistake on your own part and that "backup" is a goner

    [–] Tithen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

    Just curious. No spare SATA ports?

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    [–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    The humble 50GB /var/cache/pacman/pkg on my 256GB drive.

    [–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

    Every. Time.

    Filelight: /var/cache/pacman/pkg πŸ‘€

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    [–] devilish666@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

    Same like me who never realized i have so many BTRFS Snapper backup in every end of year.

    [–] communism@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    I think Timeshift has an option to only store n snapshots and to auto delete the oldest one if it's hit n snapshots. Or at least that's how my timeshift behaves but I set it up a while ago and don't remember the details of how

    [–] lapislazuli@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Yeah, it does have an option to keep x amount of snapshots. But the ones that took all the room I had created manually. They were from like two years ago and so I clearly didn't need them (Yes, I've been on the same Linux Mint installation for two years).

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    [–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    Best thing that I’ve ever done was to write automate a weekly script that makes a ZFS snapshot and then deletes any that are over a month old.

    [–] Logical@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    That's a very good idea. Might wanna keep an additional yearly one too though, in case you don't use the computer actively for a while and realize you have to go back more than a month at some point.

    [–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

    Ya, I offsite backup the entire zpool once a year at least. I have quarterly and yearly snapshots too.

    But the weeklies have saved me on several occasions, the others haven’t been needed yet.

    [–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 9 points 1 week ago

    93 GB is like one weekend of moderate media piracy for me...

    [–] alecsargent@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    lol, you can just set it up to keep the latest snapshots only.

    (noob here)

    [–] germtm_@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    i am also running out of disk space. {pacman package cache, Team Fortress 2, a Windows VM and the android SDK being the main culprits.}

    [–] InvestBurnout@fedia.io 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)
    [–] Allero@lemmy.today 6 points 1 week ago

    I recently had 2/3 of drive space taken by btrfs snapshots. Still learning to manage them properly :D

    [–] Sidhean@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

    "dust" is my go-to cli thing for finding what's taking up hard drive space.

    Speaking of, I should check my timeshirt settings

    [–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 days ago

    ncdu or gtfo

    [–] mlg@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

    I recently realized I forgot to use reflink copy on an XFS filesystem and ran duperemove which freed ~600GB of data

    [–] july@leminal.space 3 points 1 week ago

    400 gb of timeshift backups.. It felt so good removing them XDDD

    [–] int32@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

    I use borg btw.

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