Hi there,
On Tue, 2 Sep 2025, Steve Richards wrote:
> Not really recommended but if you just deleted the huge files from the
> pool then you'd get some error messages when e.g. nightly checks were
> run, but I think that should be about the extent of the inconvenience.
Not sure I want to try that if it's not recommended but, if I did, how
would I go about finding and deleting the files given that the historic
guidance is now obsolete?
You can use the script BackupPC_ls to find the files in the pool. The
script is in BackupPC's /bin/ directory. Below is an example, which I
ran on our pool on backup server 'piplus' to list directory 'cups' in
share 'Config' on our host 'alpha'. Years ago I configured the share
'Config' to point to the '/etc/' directory on this host - every host I
back up has a BackupPC 'Config' share.
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
piplus:# >>> su - backuppc
backuppc@piplus: $ /usr/local/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_ls -h alpha -n 2004 -s
Config cups
cups:
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 27408 2024-09-27 13:34:52 cups/cups-browsed.conf
(0b812d29a7f82f521a3c384ba53f831c)
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 27303 2019-04-17 10:04:46 cups/cups-browsed.conf~
(b2cbc92bec253cfd9c7fadb2c018cd66)
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 2923 2019-08-21 08:43:13 cups/cups-files.conf
(39776f9574026852ef283113ac2485d8)
-rw-r----- 0/7 4669 2022-12-02 15:16:05 cups/cupsd.conf
(6dfdf833d9ee3da91ecc0c46c415cf50)
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 6402 2020-01-13 17:37:56 cups/cupsd.conf.O
(1faa528b0f83af98e55510e5945e0298)
drwxr-xr-x 0/0 0 2019-08-21 08:43:13 cups/interfaces/
drwxr-xr-x 0/7 0 2020-12-18 15:33:01 cups/ppd/
-rw------- 0/7 2214 2025-08-31 00:00:42 cups/printers.conf
(316f85ea58575570bdda0773e81d811c)
-rw------- 0/7 2214 2025-08-30 00:00:36 cups/printers.conf.O
(316f85ea58575570bdda0773e81d811c)
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 240 2020-01-13 17:38:05 cups/raw.convs
(cb64c71ae2fd35a2ff07e54a6098eecf)
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 211 2020-01-13 17:38:05 cups/raw.types
(b507ca634c5be3c42db5700ec745ac0d)
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 142 2022-12-02 15:17:37 cups/snmp.conf
(47b8f1c3fecdc44e3d1fdee4b9eeb3f5)
drwx------ 0/7 0 2023-05-03 10:36:28 cups/ssl/
-rw-r----- 0/7 388 2025-08-31 00:00:43 cups/subscriptions.conf
(0692d940f7ea1701919938333a8a0ab8)
-rw-r----- 0/7 94 2025-08-31 00:00:09 cups/subscriptions.conf.O
(b0b6799bfe8fea62737eb7deb2037bfa)
backuppc@piplus: $ ls -l
/var/lib/BackupPC/cpool/30/6e/316f85ea58575570bdda0773e81d811c
-r--r--r-- 1 backuppc backuppc 880 Jul 9 01:32
/var/lib/BackupPC/cpool/30/6e/316f85ea58575570bdda0773e81d811c
backuppc@piplus: $ /usr/local/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_zcat
/var/lib/BackupPC/cpool/30/6e/316f85ea58575570bdda0773e81d811c
# Printer configuration file for CUPS ...
...
...
backuppc@piplus: $
logout
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
As you can see BackupPC_ls gives the names of the files in the pool.
The file names are hashes of the file content - hexadecimal numbers.
For better efficiency of directory searches the files are stored in
two levels of directories. Each level has 128 directories, named as
00, 02, 04, ... fa, fc, fe. As there are 128 (not 256) directories,
the first four characters of each filename are converted to 'even'
numbers and these are used as the path to the directory where the file
will be stored. In my example I changed '31' to '30' and '6f' to '6e'
and gave that path to BackupPC_zcat to uncompress the file to stdout.
It's all very straightforward when you get the hang of it, but do be
careful please if you do this with non-text files, as sending binary
data to a terminal can leave it in a weird state. I find that typing
the 'reset' command will usually fix it. :)
... Would deleting all backups that included/referenced the files
cause them to be cleaned out of the pool (and the space recovered)
automatically ...
Yes, the nightly routines will do that. As they are time-consuming,
BackupPC can be configured to check just a part of the pool each night
so depending on your configuration options it may take a few days to
recover all the space. See config.pl for details.
--
73,
Ged.
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