Disk usage

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Disk usage#

NethServer 8 uses podman to manage OCI containers. When running multiple containers the disk usage will grow quite fast and you could quickly run out of space.

Rootless containers put their data inside the user home directory /home. So if you plan to run many services on the same host, consider mounting an extra disk or partition at the /home path.

Rootful containers usually save images and volumes inside the /var/lib/containers/storage directory.

To inspect podman storage configuration of your distribution, you can use the following command:

podman info -f json | jq .store.graphRoot

There is another growing directory /var/lib/nethserver: it contains the user interface and actions of rootful modules.

Add more space#

If you’re running out of disk space, consider expanding the /home filesystem.

On a physical machine, the best option is to setup LVM during the distribution installation. On the other hand, on a virtual machine you could easily expand the whole root filesystem.

If you can’t do any of the above, consider adding a new disk and migrating existing data using the script below. The script will:

  • stop all rootless containers

  • copy all rootless containers inside the new disk

  • reclaim space from the root filesystem

  • mount the new disk under /home

  • restart all rootless containers

Before running the script, make sure to attach the disk to the machine, format it and mount to a custom location like /mnt/temp_disk. Then launch the script by passing the mount location as parameter, like:

migrate /mnt/temp_disk

The migrate script:.

#!/bin/bash
set -e
mount_dir=$1
if [ -z "$mount_dir" ]; then
  echo "Please provide the disk mount dir"
  exit 1
fi
if [ ! -d "$mount_dir" ]; then
  echo "Mount dir not found"
  exit 1
fi
if ! which rsync &>/dev/null; then
  echo "rsync not found, please install it before proceed"
  exit 1
fi
device=$(grep $(echo "$mount_dir" | sed 's/\/$//') /etc/mtab | awk '{print $1}')
if [ -z "$device" ]; then
  echo "Device not found for $mount_dir"
  exit 1
fi
for userhome in /home/*[0-9]; do
  moduleid=$(basename $userhome)
  echo "Disabling rootless module ${moduleid}..."
  systemctl stop user@$(id -u $moduleid)
done
echo "Copying files..."
rsync -avrX --delete-after /home/ $mount_dir/
echo "Reclaim space..."
for userhome in /home/*[0-9]; do
 rm -rf $userhome
done
echo "Remount disk to /home..."
umount $device
mount $device /home
for userhome in /home/*[0-9]; do
  moduleid=$(basename $userhome)
  echo "Starting rootless module ${moduleid}..."
  systemctl start user@$(id -u $moduleid)
done
echo "Done"
echo
eval $(blkid $device -o export)
echo "Add this line to fstab:"
echo
echo "UUID=$UUID /home $TYPE rw,errors=remount-ro 0 1"
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