AiO (10.15.0): Almost no space left on disk - how freeing some space?

JimmyKater · June 2, 2025, 3:15pm

Fortsetzung der Diskussion von "No disk space left on server" after updating to AIO 8.1.0:

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The Basics

Nextcloud Server version (e.g., 29.x.x):
- 30.0.11
Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 24.04):
- Ubuntu 22.04
Web server and version (e.g, Apache 2.4.25):
- whatever AiO uses
Reverse proxy and version _(e.g. nginx 1.27.2)
- whatever AiO uses
PHP version (e.g, 8.3):
- 8.3.21
Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? (Yes / No):
- no
When did this problem seem to first start?
- some days ago after installing AiO 10.14.0 which was filling my logs with error messages
Installation method (e.g. AlO, NCP, Bare Metal/Archive, etc.)
- AiO
Are you using CloudfIare, mod_security, or similar? (Yes / No)
- whatever AiO uses

Summary of the issue you are facing:

Disk ran almost full after update to AiO 10.14.0 because of tons of errormessages.
I can’t find how to delete them from the container… All commands I used where unknown.
Plus I once installed some major AI-files… I am afraid they are still present on the disk, even after uninstalling those Apps again.

Log entries

I just see this… maybe it’s a passwordsproblem?

[cron] Warnung: Used memory grew by more than 50 MB when executing job OCA\Passwords\Cron\CheckPasswordsJob (id: 132, arguments: null): 102.4 MB (before: 50.6 MB)
	von ? von -- um 02.06.2025, 12:38:21

Dateisystem                         Größe Benutzt Verf. Verw% Eingehängt auf
tmpfs                                794M    2,4M  792M    1% /run
/dev/mapper/vgubuntu-root             94G     85G  4,3G   96% /
tmpfs                                3,9G       0  3,9G    0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                                5,0M       0  5,0M    0% /run/lock
efivarfs                             256K     77K  174K   31% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/sda1                            511M    6,1M  505M    2% /boot/efi
//local.ip/Backups/Nextcloud   14T    6,5T  7,6T   47% /mnt/backup
tmpfs                                794M    116K  794M    1% /run/user/1000
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/d3a50dc867b3613cb0a99af7a97c7aaf1241e29b7ec430188b1d8cc561a44855/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/a67cd5bb7a2d02b6c0cb0f2bf3e6ed317f254134408e04144a3843dad7c740c0/merged
/dev/sr0                             4,7G    4,7G     0  100% /media/wazno/Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS amd64
/dev/sr1                              48M     48M     0  100% /media/wazno/SYNOLOGY_VMMTOOL
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/47b1666b960f477b2386b2543824f8fb81b066f429b167a97a870ca0b6d99016/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/71615212eb04aad3b0c22d194d5958364c531a2a879bdcf5ebf9aab92149542f/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/11b5bcddfc5c41d104983fe2c59bf1f7c4f070443e4fafa9bf09cf78b879d5ff/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/8c83cda069edf1e65d297d021ae80478600b84933daa34750530a7a821fffe73/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/230ae9f58565a6fa8678129883cf75d5ad79680704d03d0a22fdd8e25ba7a1aa/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/90d92a31b577ee85a3dc3c32ab3a73115e7d3cf48d866b6f484930d3365a728d/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/dfd6ebf8579e364deb900c2d9825b41a5711038b1cd1586307668c3e3935fba7/merged
overlay                               94G     85G  4,3G   96% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/36e6bb681c7aa11e73f6c2a2858ba722bc7133842acff1e9fb26607638d79e73/merged
tmpfs                                794M     60K  794M    1% /run/user/1001

szaimen · June 2, 2025, 3:41pm

Hey,

So the Nextcloud log is filling all the disk space, am I understanding this correctly?

JimmyKater · June 3, 2025, 4:24am

at least that’s what I think.

szaimen · June 3, 2025, 5:24am

Hm… You could try to debug this with du -sh /* and then going deeper into the directory tree. Would definitely make sense to figure out what uses all the disk space…

vawaver · June 3, 2025, 5:37am

I prefer ncdu over du -sh /* on Linux

ncdu is a clean, interactive tool for analyzing disk usage. Compared to the du -sh /* command, it allows easier navigation, sorting by size, and direct deletion of large files or directories.

Installation on Ubuntu

sudo apt install ncdu

Usage

Run ncdu in the root directory as root to get full access:

ncdu -x /

-x — limits the scan to a single filesystem (ignores e.g., /mnt, /proc).
Arrow keys — navigate between directories.
Enter — open a directory.
d — delete a file or directory.
q — quit the program.

sven1234 · June 3, 2025, 7:25am

You can also check whether there are some unused docker images left over.

JimmyKater · June 3, 2025, 10:03am

how do I do that?

scubamuc · June 3, 2025, 10:08am

example search and list the largest (5) files in the root (/) directory:
cd / && sudo du -hsx --exclude=proc * | sort -rh | head -5

or directly with docker

docker image ls --all to list all images

docker image prune -a WARNING! This will remove all images without at least one container associated to them.

JimmyKater · June 4, 2025, 2:21pm

REPOSITORY                                           TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED         SIZE
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-nextcloud             latest    012c17dad32e   2 weeks ago     1.88GB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-talk                  latest    d7f889c4d156   2 weeks ago     171MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-imaginary             latest    db9e0c835323   2 weeks ago     131MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-apache                latest    c1507e307575   2 weeks ago     215MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-postgresql            latest    5ca3a2975b47   2 weeks ago     277MB
nextcloud/all-in-one                                 latest    6289bc73cacb   2 weeks ago     250MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-notify-push           latest    253ef0b868b0   2 weeks ago     11MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-watchtower            latest    caffef9043f4   2 weeks ago     33.3MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-collabora             latest    b0cdb0003737   2 weeks ago     1.43GB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-borgbackup            latest    c7f3c31cbea0   2 weeks ago     65.3MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-redis                 latest    1099546136fc   2 weeks ago     43.8MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-docker-socket-proxy   latest    9da2d8b7974e   4 weeks ago     39.8MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-whiteboard            latest    ba688339b27c   4 weeks ago     336MB
nextcloud/aio-nextcloud                              latest    1e3ece402749   2 months ago    1.88GB
nextcloud/aio-talk                                   latest    cf9ea06375f7   2 months ago    170MB
nextcloud/aio-imaginary                              latest    8acebfe2f20a   2 months ago    131MB
nextcloud/aio-redis                                  latest    c8594ad8b8d9   2 months ago    43.7MB
nextcloud/aio-collabora                              latest    21a697112d03   2 months ago    1.43GB
nextcloud/aio-docker-socket-proxy                    latest    a6cedaa78a43   2 months ago    39.7MB
nextcloud/aio-whiteboard                             latest    78a9c6c3e30b   2 months ago    336MB
nextcloud/aio-apache                                 latest    4a87ef90d478   2 months ago    175MB
nextcloud/aio-postgresql                             latest    68ffbb8c1a05   2 months ago    278MB
nextcloud/aio-borgbackup                             latest    6f220b61954e   2 months ago    67.5MB
nextcloud/aio-watchtower                             latest    d1a0e983dd82   2 months ago    23.3MB
nextcloud/aio-notify-push                            latest    b836595fb4a7   2 months ago    11MB
ghcr.io/nextcloud/test-deploy                        release   daf90f7aeb8d   2 months ago    1.38GB
ghcr.io/nextcloud/translate2                         2.0.3     7b67cc379a13   9 months ago    2.95GB
ghcr.io/nextcloud/context_chat_backend               2.1.1     fea130c67b82   13 months ago   14.9GB
nextcloud/aio-domaincheck                            latest    fd4aa997bcc5   15 months ago   13.7MB
alpine                                               latest    05455a08881e   16 months ago   7.38MB

which ones can be deleted?

what’s ghcr.io?

I think I cloud get rid off

ghcr.io/nextcloud/test-deploy                        release   daf90f7aeb8d   2 months ago    1.38GB
ghcr.io/nextcloud/translate2                         2.0.3     7b67cc379a13   9 months ago    2.95GB
ghcr.io/nextcloud/context_chat_backend               2.1.1     fea130c67b82   13 months ago   14.9GB

As I don’t need them right now… (test-deploy? looks like a test by AiO itself)
I have already disabled and removed translate2 and context_chat_backend a while ago and was hoping that they would get deleted with a reboot

vawaver · June 4, 2025, 2:32pm

I also ran into the same issue recently.
As for cleaning up unused Docker images, instead of running:

docker image prune -a

—which can be risky if you’re not sure what’s still needed—I prefer using Portainer. It has a built-in way to filter and list unused images via the GUI.
From there, you can safely select and remove only what you’re sure is no longer needed.

This way I avoid accidentally deleting something important while still freeing up space.

JimmyKater · June 4, 2025, 3:08pm

sound good. But I’m almost sure that portainer would only control images that were installed by using portainer…
and - I’m afraid I can’t install any new software right now.

Thanks for reminding me that

will be dangerous. But after getting to know about where

comes from andf if the three containers I mentioned above could get removed I think that would be of great help and I would remove them manually bit by bit

vawaver · June 4, 2025, 3:31pm

You’re right that there are many large images on your system, and based on your list, a good example of a duplicate would be:

nextcloud/aio-collabora   latest   21a697112d03   2 months ago   1.43GB

Since the same component now exists under ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-collabora, this older image is almost certainly unused and safe to delete.

Regarding Portainer:

It’s a common misconception, but Portainer does not require images or containers to be created from within Portainer itself. Once installed, it connects directly to the Docker socket (/var/run/docker.sock) and provides full control over all:

Images
Containers
Volumes
Networks
— regardless of how they were created (CLI, docker-compose, or other tools like AIO).

Personal note:
In my case, I never use Portainer Stacks. I always deploy my containers via docker-compose.yml from the CLI.
Why? Because I’ve had multiple cases where configurations inside Portainer Stacks simply vanished after a Portainer update.
Since then, I use Portainer only as a management dashboard — and it works great for that.

Suggested cleanup process:

Delete the nextcloud/aio-collabora image manually using:
```
docker rmi 21a697112d03
```
That will free up ~1.43 GB.

Install Portainer, which pulls an image around 420 MB — so you’ll have enough space after removing Collabora:

docker run -d \
  -p 9000:9000 \
  -p 9443:9443 \
  --name portainer \
  --restart always \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v portainer_data:/data \
  portainer/portainer-ce

Open Portainer in your browser (usually at http://<your-ip>:9000) and:
- Go to Images
- Use the “Unused” filter
- Safely delete all remaining duplicates or old images

That way, you’ll recover disk space while having full control and no risk of deleting something essential.

Note: This post was written with the help of an AI assistant as a writing aid only. The opinions, solutions, and technical recommendations are fully based on my personal experience.
More about how and why I use AI to write forum posts:
Is there limitations to installing Nextcloud via CT template on Proxmox - #4 by vawaver

vawaver · June 4, 2025, 3:43pm

I just wanted to link this post where I documented the Nextcloud AIO update process, which includes a cleanup step to remove old Docker images after the update is completed.

Looking at your output, it seems you skipped or missed that part — you still have duplicate images from the previous registry (nextcloud/) alongside the current ones from ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/.

For example:

nextcloud/aio-collabora                             latest   21a697112d03   2 months ago   1.43GB
ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-collabora            latest   b0cdb0003737   2 weeks ago    1.43GB

This is a clear case where the older image is likely unused and can be removed to free up space.

Migration to the new `ghcr.io` registry

You might have noticed that some of your images come from the nextcloud/ repository, while others are from ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/. This migration to the new ghcr.io registry was necessary due to Docker Hub limitations — as of April 1st, 2025, anonymous pull limits were reduced to 10 pulls per hour.

To avoid update failures and image pull issues, Nextcloud AIO moved its images to ghcr.io, which doesn’t have these restrictions.
Source – help.nextcloud.com

That’s why it’s important to remove the old nextcloud/ images and use only the ones from ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/.

JimmyKater · June 11, 2025, 1:27pm

worked out brilliantly! Thanks for helping me with that task!