Can you shut off 'undelete' feature; Need to clean up /tmp/files/... ?

[sjohns10]

Hi

I am not sure if I should as this in the bitnami or Canvas forum, so thank-you for your patience and consideration if you need to send me elsewhere.

We have a standalone bitnami Canvas installation, and we are running out of disk space.

After deleting 5G of files via Canvas, no space was returned to the disk availability.

All deleted files were found in

/opt/bitnami/apps/canvaslms/htdocs/tmp/files/0000 (or 0001)/xxxx

We discovered the 'undelete' file feature, and see all these files appear to be restored when using it

After deleting 1 file of .5G while Canvas was running, and NO space was added to disk availability.

After stopping Canvas then rebooting, the allocation space was still NOT added to availability.

We deleted another file of .5G (Canvas NOT running) and the disk availability was increased.

Is there a way to shut of the feature of saving deleted files, and if so, will disk space actually be restored on delete?

In the /tmp/files/... area there are also a number of .imscc files from old class imports. Can they be safely deleted.

I know this /tmp/files area holds everything include class files, student files and student submissions.

Is there a way to safely clean this area up?

Thank-you for your time and consideration!

Sarah

[themidiman]

Just a bit of clarification: Since Canvas is designed with cloud hosting in an environment with theoretical unlimited disk storage space, I'm wondering if the Canvas UI is reporting actual secondary storage space, or a stored database table reporting how much space the course(s) ever used up? Did you already mention how you are looking for the unclaimed storage space? Are you looking at the Canvas UI or the system storage space on the hosting environment you're using? I'm unfamiliar with the Bitnami version, so I'm wondering if there's a way you can look at the underlying device storage space to see if it's actually changing when you're doing your /tmp/files deletions?

[sjohns10 · Accepted solution]

>> I'm unfamiliar with the Bitnami version,

Thank-you! This makes sense now, and I am always confused on if my question is a generic Canvas or bitnami question.

The bitnami system is a standalone (no cloud storage, only local) linux server.

I will take the question to the bitnami forum.

Thank-you for your help!!

Sarah

[sjohns10]

I just wanted to note that the bitnami forum suggested I come back here as my question is a Canvas structural one.

Since this is not cloud based, we don't have unlimited storage, and I am still hoping that I can find some instructions on how the

/opt/bitnami/apps/canvaslms/htdocs/tmp/files/0000/... and /0001/... are structured.

We delete a files from the 'files' area of a class, and it disappears, but no disk space is returned, even after a reboot of the system.

We search the above folder structure, and find the file in a /0000/xxxx/ or a /0001/xxxx/ folder, then delete it and disk space is returned.

Over time is seems this will cause some major corruption.

I would like to find out if there is a setting to actually permanently delete a file from the files area of an account or class.

thank-you!

sarah

[themidiman]

This leads me to believe that those numbers that show up in the Canvas UI are referencing database tables rather than the actual file system. When a file is 'deleted' in the Canvas UI, it appears that it is just dereferenced in the database but not deleted from the file system. It warrants a look at the database schema to find out which tables reference which files, so that might be a good direction to head. 

Hopefully there's someone who knows more about this than I do who can tell you which table to look at.

[sjohns10]

Yes, thank-you for describing this in a way that I just could not articulate:

>> are referencing database tables rather than the actual file system. When a file is 'deleted' in the Canvas UI, it appears that it is just dereferenced in the database but not deleted from the file system. It warrants a look at the database schema to find out which tables reference which files, so that might be a good direction to head

Thant is EXACTLY what I was thinking, but no one has replied on the actual 

/opt/bitnami/apps/canvaslms/htdocs/tmp/files/0000 (or 0001)/xxxx

structure.

What I have found is that if I

1) delete the file from the canvas class

2) find the file in

/opt/bitnami/apps/canvaslms/htdocs/tmp/files/0000 (or 0001)/xxxx

and delete it

than the disk space is retrieved. There SEEMS to be no error in the class itself, as it does not refer to the file any more.

I am sure this will someday cause an issue with a data base, but for now we don't have any other choice that I can find.

Hopefully someone with knowledge of the file system structure will see and reply.

🙂

Thank-you!

Sarah