Cleanup and disk space

Every release keeps on the server what a rollback needs: its images and its uploaded files. After each successful run, Dockflow deletes them for the releases that left retention.

Docker objects that Dockflow does not track, such as dangling images from other tools or stopped containers, stay until you run dockflow prune.

RetentionCopy Anchor Link

releases.keep sets how many releases an environment keeps. The default is 10 and the minimum is 2.

version: 1
app: shop
releases:
  keep: 5
environments:
  production:
    releases:
      keep: 20
  staging: {}

Here staging keeps 5 releases and production 20.

A successful run is a deploy, a rollback, or a restart, stop, scale or destroy --only, which also record a release. After each one, the agent keeps:

• the newest keep releases that succeeded (status active or superseded);
• every release newer than the oldest of those, so failed attempts in between stay visible in dockflow releases.

It deletes the other release records. A failed run deletes nothing.

dockflow rollback --to <seq> can restore any listed release that went live (active or superseded).

What leaves with an old releaseCopy Anchor Link

Containers are not part of retention. When a run succeeds, the containers of the release it replaced are removed right away. A rollback starts new containers from the kept images, so it transfers nothing.

Dockflow never deletes images from an external registry (registry.url). Use the registry's own retention policies.

dockflow pruneCopy Anchor Link

dockflow prune removes Docker objects that nothing needs, on the server of the environment you name. It acts on the whole server, not only on that environment's app.

dockflow prune production

Without options, it removes stopped containers, untagged images and networks that Dockflow does not manage, and runs the server-local registry's garbage collection. With one or more of the options below, it does only those:

It prints what it removed and the space the images took:

removed 3 containers, 12 images (2.4 GiB), 0 volumes, 2 networks

dockflow prune production --images -a
dockflow prune production --volumes
dockflow prune production --registry

What prune never removesCopy Anchor Link

• Containers Dockflow manages, running or stopped: services, including those stopped with dockflow stop, the switch, the registry.
• The app volumes declared in Compose files, and every volume Dockflow created. --volumes touches only unused anonymous volumes.
• The images of every release in retention, of every app on the server, and the images of the switch, the registry and the agent.
• Images that a container uses, and networks that Dockflow manages.

Checking disk spaceCopy Anchor Link

dockflow diagnose checks the filesystem that holds Dockflow's state (/var/lib/dockflow). It reports a disk space problem, and exits with code 9, when that filesystem has less than 2 GiB free, or less than 5% of its size and less than 10 GiB free. Without problems, it prints the free space:

dockflow diagnose production

No problem found: every service runs its containers (38.2 GiB free on disk).

When space runs low:

1. Run dockflow prune to remove unused images, stopped containers and registry layers.
2. Lower releases.keep if each release holds large images or uploads. The next successful deploy deletes what the older releases held.
3. Check the space taken by uploads of large trees that change often: the store keeps the contents of every release in retention. See uploads.

To look closer, dockflow ssh production -- df -h shows the server's filesystems, and dockflow list images production -a lists every image on the server.