Joplin sync data filling 256 GB drive

Hi,

I'm using Joplin 2.2.7 installed on a Windows 10 PC. I switched from Evernote to Joplin a few months ago and am loving it. I’m using Seafile installed on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a sync server for my Joplin notes. Recently the 256 GB drive I’m using ran out of disk space and my Joplin notes are the only thing being stored there. I deleted the data to try again and it's filling up again, currently at over 70 GB. My local profile directory is less than 12 GB. Does anyone know why my sync server would be so much larger?

Thanks!
Mike

Unfortunately I don't know Seefile.
Is Joplin configured with WebDAV or File system sync?

WebDav sync.

How big is the WebDAV folder on the server?

Probably 240 GB. It's a 256 GB mounted drive and I'm guessing after Seafile install there is 240 GB free but it could be more. Joplin data is the only thing on the drive and in that folder.

Check the Joplin folder on the server with du -h <FOLDER>

230 GB total size with 66 GB being used by Joplin.

Could you please post the output

I'm trying to but it's too many records and I'm a new user so I can't upload the file or paste a link. Here's the final line of the output. seafile-data is the Joplin data folder.

66G seafile/seafile-data/

The list should look something like this. Not much output.

12K     /seafile/seafile-data/locks
0       /seafile/seafile-data/temp
24K     /seafile/seafile-data/.sync
0       /seafile/seafile-data/.lock
3.5G    /seafile/seafile-data/.resource
3.9G    /seafile/seafile-data/

Do these five folders appear?

No. My structure looks like this:

66G seafile/seafile-data/storage
300K seafile/seafile-data/library-template
4.0K seafile/seafile-data/tmpfiles
4.0K seafile/seafile-data/httptemp/cluster-shared
8.0K seafile/seafile-data/httptemp

And the final line is:

66G seafile/seafile-data/

Then look further what consumes so much space in this folder seafile/seafile-data/storage

It breaks down into the following folders.

seafile/seafile-data/storage/blocks
seafile/seafile-data/storage/fs
seafile/seafile-data/storage/commits

blocks totals 2.5GB, fs totals 65GB with each folder in fs being over 250MB, and commits totals 351 MB.

Maybe it's keeping a file history, thumbnails or other cache data? You should try to ask on the Seafile forum as they'll know more over there.

1 Like

I was thinking the same thing. I asked there first and they had me run a clean-up script for unused but it didn't clean anything. I think I'm going to give NextCloud or some other similar software a try. Using a pi for a sync server makes it pretty easy to try different programs.

Thanks!

Maybe check you don't have file history enabled on your seafile library?

https://help.seafile.com/file_folder_managing/setting_library_history/

Thanks! I've recently installed NextCloud on the same device that has Seafile and that's causing problems with the Seafile Web App. Once I get that working I'll look into file history. I've been using whatever the default is when you create a new library.

I was wrong about the Seafile Web App not working. It was working fine, I was going to the wrong address. :man_facepalming: The default history setting is "Keep full history" so I changed that to none and am re-syncing. I'll post in a few days once things are complete and I can check disk usage.

Wanted to give an update. I never got Joplin to work with Seafile without it taking all of my drive space. Not sure what the issue is as I know others recommend Seafile with Joplin but I've moved to NextCloud. That's working much better for me.

Yeah that should work, I've used NC myself for a few years (then had some issues with it).
However, if you're only using NC for Joplin - have you maybe considered Joplin Server? I'm not sure whether there are easy install instructions for RPi available at the moment, but if syncing Joplin is your only use-case anyway, you might as well get some extra features. (Disclaimer: I have not tried it on RPi myself; I just see you're new here and I don't know if you know this is even an option.)