Subject: Re: bug#62379: /gnu/store/.links filling the hard drive on foreign distro
From: Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]>
To: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked], Elias Kueny <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 May 2023 11:05:21 -0400
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hi,

Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Elias Kueny <[email-masked]> skribis:
>
>> The problem is the size of /gnu/store/.links: after garbage collection
>> with "guix gc --delete-generations=1w", /gnu/store is 17.4 GB in
>> total, and /gnu/store/.links is 14.5 GB (344120 items, ranging from 93
>> MB to 4.1 kB each).
>
> This is expected: /gnu/store/.links contains hard links to other files
> in /gnu/store.  IOW /gnu/store/.links is a subset of the rest of
> /gnu/store, sharing the same inodes.
>
>> The garbage collector prints that "currently hard linking saves
>> 3717.77 MiB".  With a 40GB hard drive, the gnu store regularly fills
>> up all the available space if I'm not careful. I found from an old
>> issue (https://issues.guix.gnu.org/24937#1) that 10 millions links
>> should need around 700 MB, so this sounds like a bug.
>
> Note that the issue you mention was addressed to a large extent in 2021:
>
>   https://issues.guix.gnu.org/24937#20
>

Closing, as this is working as intended.  If you do not wish to use the
guix-daemon deduplication feature, you can provide it with the
'--disable-deduplication', with the caveat that your hard drive may be
filled even faster :-).

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim