Subject: bug#62379: /gnu/store/.links filling the hard drive on foreign distro

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2023 23:12:42 +0200

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

HTH!

Ludo’.