0

One of our hosts is being clogged by lots of docker junk. I'm cleaning dangling images and volumes regularly, but recently I've noticed it doesn't help that much, and the reason was a load of aufs-related files. From a quick research I figured out it's the docker storage driver at current use, so I figured it's a lot of important cached files, but that just seems like A LOT of caching. We're running about 15 different images on the host.

So, I thought this might be eligible for some cleaning, but not sure I won't delete something important. So, is there a way to clean up the aufs-related, unneeded files?

This is a screenshot of the disk stats (running on Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS):

enter image description here

Milkncookiez
  • 171
  • 1
  • 8
  • Wow, someone's still using aufs? Anyway, that looks pretty normal; I don't see an obvious problem. You can clean up unused images, etc., in [the usual way](https://docs.docker.com/config/pruning/). – Michael Hampton Jun 15 '20 at 21:09
  • Yeah, I do prune volumes, images and containers, bu these `aufs` files are still the ones that take the major disk space. So can I clean that up or I shouldn't touch it? Also, this host was set up almost 4 yrs ago, so I guess that's why it's on aufs. What's the alternative? And should I switch? – Milkncookiez Jun 16 '20 at 08:13
  • Linux (the kernel) rejected aufs years ago, but Canonical kept pushing it on people long after there was a better alternative. These days (and even back then) the recommended storage driver is overlay2. As for your disk space, you've used 89% of the roughly 48GiB filesystem, but if you've already pruned everything then it's likely all that is in use and you need more disk space. – Michael Hampton Jun 16 '20 at 14:09
  • Did you happen to solve it? I have exactly the same problem and I wonder if I can safely delete the aufs directory or if it is better to uninstall docker package -> reboot -> remove any remaining files -> install docker package again – L.R. Sep 16 '22 at 09:29
  • 1
    Hey @L.R., I don't remember, tbh. I don't work on this project anymore. I guess try to switch to a different storage driver? – Milkncookiez Sep 20 '22 at 13:49

0 Answers0