Leftover chunks in datastore - safe to delete?

[alex591]

I created a datastore called 'restore', many months ago, purely for the purpose of a trial restoration from tape. All went well, and after I'd finished testing, I deleted all backups from that datastore, and it shows as empty in the GUI. The output from the latest GC is:

2021-11-04T23:54:58+00:00: starting garbage collection on store restore
2021-11-04T23:54:58+00:00: Start GC phase1 (mark used chunks)
2021-11-04T23:54:58+00:00: Start GC phase2 (sweep unused chunks)
2021-11-04T23:56:28+00:00: Removed garbage: 0 B
2021-11-04T23:56:28+00:00: Removed chunks: 0
2021-11-04T23:56:28+00:00: Original data usage: 0 B
2021-11-04T23:56:28+00:00: On-Disk chunks: 0
2021-11-04T23:56:28+00:00: Deduplication factor: 1.00
2021-11-04T23:56:28+00:00: TASK OK

Despite that, there's still around 1GB of data in the corresponding '.chunks' directory.

Not that 1GB is particularly troubling, but I'm just wondering
a) Why is it still there? and
b) Is it safe to delete, either the '.chunks' directory itself, or the contents of it?

I've also noticed that there are still 'vm/xxx/owner' files for the previously deleted backups. I don't know if that Is expected behaviour or not.

Thanks,

Alex

 

[dcsapak]

Despite that, there's still around 1GB of data in the corresponding '.chunks' directory.

what is taking up the data?
a 'file -type -f' in the .chunks directory will list all files in there

b) Is it safe to delete, either the '.chunks' directory itself, or the contents of it?

no, the chunks folder contains precreated dirs that will not be recreated on the fly so removing the content will make the datastore unusable (until those folders are recreated manually)

I've also noticed that there are still 'vm/xxx/owner' files for the previously deleted backups. I don't know if that Is expected behaviour or not.

yes thats normal, the owner does not get deleted just because there are no snapshots in the group anymore