Help me decide to delete btrfs snapshots

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1

Hey there,

I am slowly, but surely running out of disk space on my boot drive and I want to clean it up a bit. While doing this, I found out that my .snapshot folder is 221.3 GiB big (using sudo -E QT_XCB_GL_INTEGRATION=none DISPLAY=:0 filelight)

However, when I take a look at snapper I only see the snapshots being 1 GiB big at most

$ sudo snapper list
    # │ Type   │ Pre # │ Date                     │ User │ Used Space │ Cleanup │ Description            │ Userdata
──────┼────────┼───────┼──────────────────────────┼──────┼────────────┼─────────┼────────────────────────┼──────────────
   0  │ single │       │                          │ root │            │         │ current                │
1346* │ single │       │ Sat Apr 19 13:10:29 2025 │ root │   3.39 MiB │         │ writable copy of #1316 │
1449  │ pre    │       │ Wed Jun 18 00:10:30 2025 │ root │   1.05 GiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)           │ important=yes
1450  │ post   │  1449 │ Wed Jun 18 00:11:36 2025 │ root │  13.84 MiB │ number  │                        │ important=yes
1453  │ pre    │       │ Wed Jun 18 21:14:09 2025 │ root │  92.00 MiB │ number  │ zypp(myrlyn)           │ important=yes
1454  │ post   │  1453 │ Wed Jun 18 21:14:58 2025 │ root │   5.91 MiB │ number  │                        │ important=yes
1455  │ pre    │       │ Thu Jun 19 13:06:52 2025 │ root │   2.61 MiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)           │ important=no
1456  │ post   │  1455 │ Thu Jun 19 13:06:54 2025 │ root │ 128.00 KiB │ number  │                        │ important=no
1457  │ pre    │       │ Thu Jun 19 13:07:25 2025 │ root │  64.00 KiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)           │ important=no
1458  │ post   │  1457 │ Thu Jun 19 13:07:25 2025 │ root │  96.00 KiB │ number  │                        │ important=no
1459  │ pre    │       │ Thu Jun 19 13:11:19 2025 │ root │ 256.00 KiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)           │ important=no
1460  │ post   │  1459 │ Thu Jun 19 13:11:20 2025 │ root │  80.00 KiB │ number  │                        │ important=no
1461  │ pre    │       │ Thu Jun 19 13:11:22 2025 │ root │  80.00 KiB │ number  │ zypp(zypper)           │ important=no
1462  │ post   │  1461 │ Thu Jun 19 13:11:23 2025 │ root │ 256.00 KiB │ number  │                        │ important=no

I think I can delete the snapshots with cockpit quite easily, but I don’t want to mess up my system.

$ sudo btrfs filesystem usage /
Overall:
    Device size:                 463.26GiB
    Device allocated:            434.07GiB
    Device unallocated:           29.19GiB
    Device missing:                  0.00B
    Device slack:                    0.00B
    Used:                        396.24GiB
    Free (estimated):             62.19GiB      (min: 47.60GiB)
    Free (statfs, df):            62.19GiB
    Data ratio:                       1.00
    Metadata ratio:                   2.00
    Global reserve:              447.47MiB      (used: 0.00B)
    Multiple profiles:                  no

Data,single: Size:424.01GiB, Used:391.00GiB (92.22%)
   /dev/nvme0n1p2        424.01GiB

Metadata,DUP: Size:5.00GiB, Used:2.62GiB (52.36%)
   /dev/nvme0n1p2         10.00GiB

System,DUP: Size:32.00MiB, Used:80.00KiB (0.24%)
   /dev/nvme0n1p2         64.00MiB

Unallocated:
   /dev/nvme0n1p2         29.19GiB
2

@Bird Hi, it is likely not snapshots, but maybe btrfs maintenance not run, journal logs, core dumps etc…

Suggest a read here https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Cleanup_system and https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:BTRFS#Disk_Space_Full_Because_of_Snapper

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Show

btrfs qgroup show /
4 
$ sudo btrfs qgroup show /
Qgroupid    Referenced    Exclusive   Path 
--------    ----------    ---------   ---- 
0/5           16.00KiB     16.00KiB   <toplevel>
0/256         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @
0/257        149.36GiB    149.36GiB   @/var
0/258         14.89MiB     14.89MiB   @/usr/local
0/259          1.18MiB      1.18MiB   @/srv
0/260        109.44MiB    109.44MiB   @/root
0/261        725.96MiB    725.96MiB   @/opt
0/262        229.85GiB    229.79GiB   @/home
0/263          4.24MiB      4.24MiB   @/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi
0/264         16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @/boot/grub2/i386-pc
0/265         80.00KiB     80.00KiB   @/.snapshots
0/1490        16.00KiB     16.00KiB   @/var/lib/machines
0/1622        16.18GiB      3.43MiB   @/.snapshots/1346/snapshot
0/1725        15.95GiB      1.05GiB   @/.snapshots/1449/snapshot
0/1726        16.09GiB     13.84MiB   @/.snapshots/1450/snapshot
0/1729        16.18GiB     92.00MiB   @/.snapshots/1453/snapshot
0/1730        16.15GiB      5.91MiB   @/.snapshots/1454/snapshot
0/1731        16.15GiB      2.61MiB   @/.snapshots/1455/snapshot
0/1732        16.15GiB    128.00KiB   @/.snapshots/1456/snapshot
0/1733        16.15GiB     64.00KiB   @/.snapshots/1457/snapshot
0/1734        16.18GiB     96.00KiB   @/.snapshots/1458/snapshot
0/1735        16.18GiB    256.00KiB   @/.snapshots/1459/snapshot
0/1736        16.18GiB     80.00KiB   @/.snapshots/1460/snapshot
0/1737        16.18GiB     80.00KiB   @/.snapshots/1461/snapshot
0/1738        16.18GiB    256.00KiB   @/.snapshots/1462/snapshot
1/0           18.70GiB      2.51GiB   <0 member qgroups>
255/1490      16.00KiB     16.00KiB   <0 member qgroups>

@malcolmlewis I’ll read up on your first link, but I already read your second one, which is why I am so confused about my snapshots. I get very inconsistent size values with filelight, btrfs, and snapper. I just want to figure out which folder or file is hogging all my disk space.

I already found a big docker folder (82 GiB) under /var/lib which I will soon remove, because I already uninstalled docker a few months ago…

5

Either application that you use does not know how to interpret btrfs space consumption or you misunderstand what it says.

The root filesystem in SUSE is located inside of /.snapshots directory. All other filesystems are mounted below this root filesystem.

The snapshot 1346 with path /.snapshots/1346/snapshot is your current root. Which consumes just 16GB. All snapshots of the root in total consume just additional 2GB. But your /home consumes 229GB. /home is not under snapshot management and it is up to you to find out what is inside.

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Screenshot_20250619_142113
Screenshot_20250619_1421131410×814 153 KB

I guess you’re right and the snapshots get calculated very weirdly, so I won’t delete them… Deleting the enormous docker folder already helped quite a bit, as I’m now down to 70% usage.

7

Do not use filelight. It does show wrong calculations for BTRFS. You can google it…

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