sitedata usage is massive

sitedata usage is massive

by Stefan McGarvey -
Number of replies: 13

Hello, I've found out that my Moodle site is taking 108Gb of my 120Gb disk usage. The Moodle File usage Report says I have about 20Gb in course files. I've emptied my Trashdir which only reduced my files by a few Gb. Look at this report I figured I have about 88Gb of unaccounted data. How can I find out if there's back end instances of my courses that for some reason haven't deleted.

If I have to delete the complete Filedir folder would this clear up all duplicates that may be hidden? or is there something else I can do.

I don't want to double spend a ton more money to double my disk usage if there's something else easier I can do.

Thank you for your help.

Stefan




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In reply to Stefan McGarvey

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

It would seem to me that if your Moodle supports 1000 courses and 50,000 users, that perhaps 100GB would be reasonable, maybe even lean.  However, my small Moodle supports 10-15 courses/year and around 500 students/year.  After 2 1/2 years, my disk storage is approaching 10GB.

A lot has to do with what people, both students and instructors, are uploading into their courses, and how instructors are creating course content.

For example, I have around 50GB of videos.  But I don't keep these in my Moodle because every night my Moodle backup file would be >50GB.  Instead, I keep my videos on a separate video serving system and link to them from within Moodle.  The students would never know the difference, nor care.

So, you might want to share some of how you use Moodle in your organization with us.  Or maybe my post is already making you think.

There are many ways to keep disk usage down.  You are not the first person to ask this question.  Make sure to search for other posts on this topic.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Stefan McGarvey -
Thank you Rick,
We use our Moodle as a test site for the courses we build. We have maybe 10 course that have 5 - 12 sessions per course. I only have 3 staff that work on our courses that would update an existing file in Moodle.
Ex. Course A Session 1 had some edits completed so one of my staff would replace the old Session 1 with the new session 1.

Also as a note we don't do Moodle back ups as I did see someone else had an issue with massize amounts of data from backups.

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.

Cheers Stefan
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In reply to Stefan McGarvey

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi
You wrote:
> The Moodle File usage Report says I have about 20Gb in course files.
Where is this File usage Report?

> I've found out that my Moodle site is taking 108Gb
What exactly adds up to those 108 GB?

> If I have to delete the complete Filedir folder would this clear up all duplicates that may be hidden?
Are you kidding? moodledata/filedir is everything!

P.S. I wonder whether this is something for the Repositories forum.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Stefan McGarvey -

Here's the Report that I mentioned this was a plugin that was added today. I thought filedir was just the location of all the courses I had added to my Moodle I didn't know that it deletes everything. I'm not a pro user

Attachment Moodle Report Picture.jpg
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In reply to Stefan McGarvey

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

The top 3 in the report show thousand,xxx in MB ... uhhhh, that would mean the top 3 are actually #.# Gig's.   Or is my math faulty?

Do NOT delete moodledata/filedir/ ... that's where all files uploaded and backups of courses, etc. is stored ... but, unfortunately, not by humanly recognizble file names.

Some questions before going further ... do you have automated backups turned on?   IF so, what options have you selected in preferences for auto backups ... like keep 3 etc.

Site administration Courses Backups Automated backup setup

Site administration Courses Backups General backup defaults

Also ... how often is your cron job running?   Cron consist of 'task' which are jobs moodle performs to keep it 'lean and mean'.   There are some 'clean up' task that might be running as frequently as needed.

See Site Admin Menu and search for 'scheduled' to find the scheduled task list.

Hopefully, you don't suffer from CLAS (command line avoidance syndrome) and one can use some command line mysql queries to locate large files to know where to go to remove them.

'SoS', Ken




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In reply to Ken Task

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Stefan McGarvey -

Hi Kent,

I haven't run any back ups before as we have our courses already backed up on our internal server so if one of my courses on Moodle went down I would just re-upload the course that needed fixing. I've done a picture of the scheduled tasks you mentioned.

Attachment Moodle Scheduled Tasks.jpg
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In reply to Stefan McGarvey

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Uhh???

'I haven't run any back ups before as we have our courses already backed ..'

Don't think a moodle has autobackups turned on by default ... so how are your courses already backed up?

I do see in your task automated backups set to run ASAP and @50 after hour?  It's not listed first ... as I see it in moodle instances I have ... sooo???

All in yours shows last run Aug 2016??!!!  Have you ever set up a cron job?  There are 'clean up' task and a couple of those relate/deal with files no longer used .. culled from system.

Where do you host?

And was site installed with one of those 'one click' wonders?

'SoS', Ken


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In reply to Ken Task

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Stefan McGarvey -
Hi Kent,
We have an office server separate from the Dreamhost VPS we use for our website and Moodle platform. So we back up our office server onto another hard drive so that's what I meant about backing up my courses not using Moodle back up.
I haven't run a cron job before. To be honest I don't know what a cron job is. One of my staff installed Moodle for me who has a better understanding of these instal on VPS and servers.
My knowledge is only uploading courses and adding users to review those courses we've built for them before delivering final SCORM file to end client. I alsso know how to delete the trashdir on the ftp.
Thank you Stefan
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In reply to Stefan McGarvey

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators

"IMPORTANT: Do not skip setting up the cron process on your server for your Moodle. Your site will not work properly without it." https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Cron

I assume the person who installed Moodle didn't look at cron. When was that? (We should have a "best of" list of longest surviving Moodle instances without cron. ;) )

Independently of cron, the time of a site without maintainer is counted.

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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Stefan McGarvey -
We started with 1.2 but that was the one click install on GoDaddy. I'm sure we've been running 3.0 for at least 5 years. Thanks for the tips.

Stefan
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In reply to Stefan McGarvey

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Then that other staff member needs to study up on cron!   Pass the following URL along to him/her:

https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Cron

Cron not running is why you 'know how to delete the trashdir on the ftp' ... cron will take that off your plate as cron does include 'jobs/task' that empties the trashdir ... no human action/needed! smile

'SoS', Ken

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In reply to Ken Task

Re: sitedata usage is massive

by Stefan McGarvey -
Thanks Ken,
I've passed this information on and hopefully this will solve our issue.
Regards, Stefan
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