Timeshift takes up all Drive space - EasyOS to the rescue

[ssfc72]

On my Dell notebook computer which has an 80G partition for my Mint Distro, I was shocked when a warning started popping up on my screen, that I only had about 1G of Drive space left.

I recalled installing the Timeshift program to back up the computer files, when I was doing some changes to the Distro, so I thought this might be the culprit.
I went into synaptic and deleted the Timeshift program and all programs related to it.
This did not give me back any drive space.

I searched the Mint Distro for any Timeshift folder and at first I did not find anything.
Then after more searching I did discover a Timeshift folder but I could not delete the folder.

So, I got my Puppy Linux usb pen drive and booted up Puppy Linux on the Dell notebook, to try and delete the Timeshift folder.
Normally Puppy is good at allowing Root access to files and folders to delete them. However I was not able to do anything with the Timeshift folder, using Puppy Linux. :-(

I then recalled that EasyOS Distro was pretty good at allowing files to be accessed.
So I booted up EasyOS from a usb pendrive, found the Timeshift folder and was able to  delete the Folder and all the files, with no problem.
I rebooted back into the Mint Distro and found I now had 36G of drive space available.

EasyOS is now my go to Distro, when I want to access files which can't be accessed from other Distros.

[fox]

Thanks for posting this! Wow; that's a lot of drive space. Timeshift is a good tool for protecting against a bad update, but now I'm glad I'm not using it.

[buster]

Now checking the space used on Marilyn's computer. HD still has about 250 gig of space left, so it isn't an issue really. But I do know it will be using 32.4 gig, and that is a lot.

Have removed some of the old time saves, but I'm not sure that makes a huge difference. I suspect the program has to keep a base of software and the incremental changes. Probably when an old save is removed, some of it has to migrate to a later date, so original installs and increments are kept.

Dr Mike, how much space does the Mac use? Have you ever checked it?

[fox]

....

Dr Mike, how much space does the Mac use? Have you ever checked it?

If you are referring to my Time Capsule, which I use to back up the Mac using its Time Machine software, my Time Capsule is 1TB and nearly full. But it has been doing incremental backups since 2014, and it does them several times a day. It might also have backed up an older iMac that I no longer have. I can't mount it to check at the moment because I forgot the password.

[buster]

Even though your mac has been backing up for almost a decade, it would seem that Timeshift and Time Machine are probably equally hungry for hd space. I believe Bill's has been doing his for a few years too.

A TB is big.

It is interesting that a series of incremental backups is way, way, way bigger than an operating system.

[buster]

It seems that Time Machine will use whatever space you give it. When it runs out of space, it deletes the oldest backups. I assume Mint is the same.

So the suggestions I read were you need, say, three or four times your space allocated to /.

And in settings of Time-Shift you can indicate partitions to be backed up. I would assume / is the only one you're worried about, unless you have only one partition, and that spells trouble I would think.

[BusterE]

"It seems that Time Machine will use whatever space you give it."

I'm guessing Harry was too embarrassed to tell you that when I stayed overnight we found the spare room closet was 60% full of backups that TimeShift had piled in there when he wasn't looking.

TimeShift is a menace and we are in danger of having the whole world filled up with backups of Mint systems.

[buster]

'I'm guessing Harry was too embarrassed...'

I wasn't embarrassed at all. I hardly use that closet. No biggie.

The shed is a bigger problem. There are so many backups cluttering the place I can't get the lawnmower out!

[ssfc72]

Harry, I think you should send in your stories to the Big Bang Theory tv show. They pay BIG money to their writers. :-)

[buster]

'Harry, I think you should send in your stories to the Big Bang Theory tv show.'

Blush, stammer.

And they are now off the air except for reruns. The star turned down $50,000 for a 13th season, which is probably a good idea. We found when we got to 15 mil, more didn't really make a difference. But free time is priceless.

[Jason]

I read Bill's initial post and planned to respond to it later and forgot until now. Although this is a long post, it's worth reading.

With Timeshift, you don't choose how much space to allocate. You choose how many and how often to take snapshots. Once it's finished doing those, and has a new one to do, it will remove the oldest one. If you're saying to keep 10 boots, 3 daily, and 11 monthly snapshots, it's going to take up whatever space it needs (or until it runs out and the OS complains). It's just doing what you told it.

The snapshots of your system at that point in time minus the files you chose to exclude. By default, that's the user directories, temporary files and device links. There's a good reason for not including home directories. I'll let you ponder that one although I mentioned why in another post.

In any case, to remove snapshots, you should use Timeshift to do it and then uninstall it. There's a tab that shows snapshots and just delete the ones you no longer want. If you created a bunch of documents with LibreOffice, uninstalled it, and it also deleted the documents, you might be understandably upset. Same with TImeshift.

Of course, if you didn't remove the snapshots before uninstalling them, being unable to delete the snapshots manually is a pain. It's because TImeshift runs with root privileges because many, if not most, system files can't be read without it. Some file managers let you open a folder/directory as root. But you can also use 'sudo rm -rf' once you're absolutely sure you're in the directory where Timeshift stores the files. Be VERY careful. I always do an 'ls' just to make sure I'm in the right directory before running this risky command. Of course, if you use Timeshift, you can easily recover.

I'm not sure how often you had it set to do backups, Bill, but it has to take the amount of space of your installed system to start, and then changes on top of that. If you also used it to backup your home directories and use that system to download ISOs you were in for a world of hurt since all that would be backed up, uncompressed. Since it uses rsync, the filesystem is backed up as is, not compressed.

Timeshift is great but, as with all programs, it behooves you to play with it and learn the basics.

I normally just have it set to do 3 weekly snapshots and a few boot snapshots. I don't include my home directory. Timeshift snapshots are on a 64 GB flash drive. After that initial snapshot, other snapshots are quick. It's fine to keep it on a partition but if the drive goes, so does your system backup and you can run out of space if you try to do too many snapshots. You could also designate a specific drive or partition for Timeshift which will prevent it from ever eating up your drive. But if you're running out of space, you need to make fewer snapshots or get a separate drive for it.

Harry noted:

It is interesting that a series of incremental backups is way, way, way bigger than an operating system.

It's definitely going to be larger just like a car with kids in it is going to weigh more than a car without, but not necessarily a lot larger. It all depends on the changes and how many snapshots you keep. It could be way bigger, it could be hardly bigger. My Pop OS install was probably about 15 GB. My Timeshift snapshots take up less than half of my 64 GB flash drive. If you keep a snapshot before and after an upgrade then there could be considerable changes. It could end up being twice the size.

Rsync, btw, is how the webservers that serve up Linux ISOs and other related files, operate. One website gets a new ISO added and the other file servers mirror it. They don't have to copy over all the files (e.g. ISOs), just the changed/added ones). So it's pretty efficient and very accurate.

Hope this helps.

[buster]

The woman next door came over, hopping mad about the three boxes of Mint backups she found in her cold cellar.

[Jason]

'Harry, I think you should send in your stories to the Big Bang Theory tv show.'

Blush, stammer.

And they are now off the air except for reruns. The star turned down $50,000 for a 13th season, which is probably a good idea. We found when we got to 15 mil, more didn't really make a difference. But free time is priceless.

If I was only offered $50,000 after 15 mil, I'd turn it down, too. It was a good show in the early seasons, but then once it got into everybody getting married and having babies, blah. I liked living vicariously through the formerly single geeks.

[Jason]

If you are referring to my Time Capsule, which I use to back up the Mac using its Time Machine software, my Time Capsule is 1TB and nearly full. But it has been doing incremental backups since 2014, and it does them several times a day. It might also have backed up an older iMac that I no longer have. I can't mount it to check at the moment because I forgot the password.

Forgot the password??? We've never done that.