Path/to/nextcloud/data/nc-user/uploads folder is very big - can I delete it?

ℹ️ Support
1

Nextcloud version (eg, 20.0.5): 25
Operating system and version (eg, Ubuntu 20.04): 22.04 LTS
Apache or nginx version (eg, Apache 2.4.25): 2.4.52
PHP version (eg, 7.4): 8.1

The issue you are facing:
In the user folder there is a folder calles “uploads”, it contains tons of cryptic folders and has a size of ~50GB.
What is that? Can I delete the folder manually? What is the purpose of this folder? The user uploaded only ~100MB

Best, jp

2

I’m not sure all my users upload folders are empty.

I don’t know if you have any encryption enabled.

if the user has all his files i would rename or backup his upload folder create a empty new upload folder. after a week delete the renamed (backedup) folder if no issues have arose.

also check that his new upkoad folder is still empty as is should be when there’ s no upload taking place.

1 Like
3

After testing it as recommended I can say:

  1. The folder is needed, even if it`s full of data
  2. renaming it throws an “folder-error” for the nextcloud user beeing unable to upload more files
  3. setting it back to the original folder fixes the issue of folder-error
  4. The original issue of big folder size remains, I will observe this for more days to see what happens

Has anyone an idea what its about with this folder? all uploads are completed

edit:
the folder reduced automatically down to 11GB, hopefully it will do more

4

have you created a new empty uploads folder for the user with the correct permissions. after renaming the original?

5

I just created a new folder uploads, which permissions are needed an howcan I do that? @Vincent_Stans

6

the folder should be owned by the webserver user www-data

eighter create the folder with that user

sudo -u www-data mkdir /path/to/nc-data/user/uploads

or change it afterwards

sudo chown www-data:www-data /path/to/nc-data/user/uploads

more over in the docs https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/external_storage/local.html#local

1 Like
7

Finally the folder got flushed by itself and is empty now. This means I´m not able to test further things anymore.

Conclusion:
The folder becomes empty by itself after a few days.