Running out of disk space on HPC without really doing anything unusual

General Usage
1

I have some workflows that I am running on an HPC, and I have suddenly run out of space, preventing me from actually doing anything. The actual scripts and stuff I have created corresponds to 2 MB, and I have reached the limit of 20 GB.

I have tried

du -BM -d 3 ~ 2>/dev/null | awk '$1>=200' | sort -n

and there seems to be a lot of Julia files written, here is some of it:

2M	/home/math2076/.vscode-server/data/logs
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/020f522505f193c968b0a9d6199f7de2c4748cd2
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/36e9b0d89deb511d38dc1f51d370e2b445dd33ea
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/6da9d8475fd9fd2867e3bd1f46f3913c800a316f
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/85dab0a3f6b9cc2e5d61165ee376bf46260812a4
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/899764f4e46a2e2a6f6351ad5c22e6002d24d294
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/b4d9e913014918426c3ca714a536e10b9f54c784
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/bc6a577e335709d64448aa4ed7fa1bed0b2dc000
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Clustering
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Colors
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/DiffEqBase
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/DifferentiationInterface
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/ModelingToolkitStandardLibrary
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/NNlib
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Optim
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/StaticArrays
3M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/StatsBase
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/13befbe35cffe7da192c7001ece18b4be3aa3720
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/2ddd5ffa5c5c915c7380ddc1e702176ac88c4d30
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/5b34e010ca7a3d88eeebecbc7a5b39ad72e33323
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/641f192fccf3897c9bb53cb8edc1e0cbd316488f
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/DataFrames
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Interpolations
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/JumpProcesses
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Moshi
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/NonlinearSolve
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Plots
4M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Symbolics
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/23d821271a00e164eb2b5c273985da44f9a831a1
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/3ded11a619b50414af902abd0a7a5bb6426b5b92
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/52d9b3e9e3507f7b2cf723af43d0e7f095e2edc7
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/5acd766faaca59c3c1f3cfa67e2bf6dcf1e3e883
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/5c030ff72c13f84fbbc8f93a146e34c6219a0261
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/94475b26c9b6ff3bed68391232c55fd81a4a64b4
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Bijections
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/BlackBoxOptim
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/CommonMark
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Distributions
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Graphs
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Optimization
5M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/SciMLBase
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/154613385300b9b80e509cbdd275d3ab36b1f8f4
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/45a076ac2b0b5e528159c96142254106709ec982
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/587de110e5f58fd435dc35b294df31bb7a75f692
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/8655261cdb15792fb0d954f81fb65ca24dc89fb5
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/bdb4015047b09c6ac5002f73dfd5be8ddf59189b
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/d03aca19e34a4289ab7f118cf0b212ca46eb49be
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/JuliaFormatter
6M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/OrdinaryDiffEqStabilizedRK
7M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/5cb2f5f8a13f3117c7770ed28b896eff85315555
7M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/776315fc8f986a42d99522f5d7bda33054e7ae6e
7M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/8ee8fe4ac1379a41d1773247765cd9b8fe7f3bf8
7M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/c9533bea1f28a1adea8cb096009f360534f7ba90
7M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/d2e35542935eb5128f7886900685ebc7bf243180
7M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/ed48bfcf31d2d5ebdc0a681d1ed07e1e9f9f0377
7M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/fc239b3ff5739aeab252bd154fa4dd045fefe629
9M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/82b4098b07b2476cbd82b2a6b4179058243d1bb3
9M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/cf5d5f8a6109be3f9c460a39768f57a3e53ff11d
9M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/ComponentArrays
9M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/LikelihoodProfiler
21M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/dc526f26fb179a3f68eb13fcbe5d2d2a5aa7eeac
21M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Sobol
22M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/1d90be1fb2a7f5023513bdcbb8abf7727ded6044
27M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/5b83972689fb7dea5e89326f1c0ba60d68e962fb
28M	/home/math2076/.vscode-server/extensions/github.copilot-chat-0.30.3
29M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/2b2f7c502ec3d6f64ee8fe03c85171a8c469b56a
29M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/CSV
30M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/2710f18abd87950eedcef37211b22fb517ee1043
30M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/6d8a1f48d4b47dc03fa048d88680be84ae15e5fc
42M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/66ca7b28f1bbc22b343c23ceede5b1dfe67c1364
45M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/ColorSchemes
46M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/OrdinaryDiffEq
47M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/2d4a05dbda3cb3f11c55fa063c04ac456b5720d1
47M	/home/math2076/.vscode-server/data/CachedExtensionVSIXs
51M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/GR
51M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages/Lux
54M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/f0557b9a3c2c4667444e8fc63c1fc9c2c5cb9e63
64M	/home/math2076/.vscode-server/extensions/github.copilot-1.350.0
66M	/home/math2076/.vscode-server/data
74M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/eae77862e95d04dfafb9fbe9ae39e688b35d756a
79M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/8b45e0c5c7fbecd1e34f024cdc22fec4be4c7807
82M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/4483b551bfefda4b91721e8ce30336775d2d7658
92M	/home/math2076/.vscode-server/extensions
97M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/d1043ab6d3a5aecffb63786a4314c3998cf2bc49
233M	/home/math2076/.julia/dev
233M	/home/math2076/.julia/dev/Catalyst
357M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-17_0015/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/daily.2025-08-24_0010/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1105/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1205/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1305/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1405/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1505/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1605/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-24_0015/.vscode-server
361M	/home/math2076/.vscode-server
392M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/daily.2025-08-23_0010/.vscode-server
512M	/home/math2076/.julia/packages
527M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/03b04466a9b7dc64deb348ce55333edc5dd6b0ce
541M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts/27edf95310a71d47422663c3aea849f56efb1360
618M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-17_0015/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/daily.2025-08-23_0010/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/daily.2025-08-24_0010/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1105/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1205/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1305/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1405/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1505/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1605/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-24_0015/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.vscode
825M	/home/math2076/.vscode/cli
825M	/home/math2076/.vscode/cli/servers
2358M	/home/math2076/.julia/artifacts
3250M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-17_0015/Projects
4403M	/home/math2076/.julia/compiled
4403M	/home/math2076/.julia/compiled/v1.11
6654M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/daily.2025-08-23_0010/.julia
6654M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-17_0015/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/daily.2025-08-24_0010/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1105/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1205/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1305/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1405/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1505/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1605/.julia
7512M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-24_0015/.julia
20271M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/daily.2025-08-24_0010
20271M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1105
20271M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1205
20271M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1305
20271M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1405
20271M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1505
20271M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/weekly.2025-08-24_0015
20272M	/home/math2076/.snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1605
213028M	/home/math2076

Do anyone know what might actually have gone wrong here? I don’t really feel I have been doing something unusual, so it seems odd that suddenly my diskspace tanked. There are probably som redundant stuff that have been written, but I don’t really want to start deleting stuff whithout knowing what I actually delete…

2

All the .snapshot/ entries makes me think this is on a B-tree file system (BTRFS); and I know from personal experience that if BTRFS snapshots are not properly handled (e.g. automatically cleaned up), they will very quickly use significant storage space. Additionally, on BTRFS, disc usage should be measured with the btrfs filesystem du instead of the plain du as the latter will show potentially wildly inaccurate usages.

Otherwise, the two biggest culprits that contribute to ballooning julias are probably always artifacts and compiled. Comparing the sizes of these directories (2358M and 4403M, respectively) with that of overall .julia (7512M), you get that artifacts accounts for about 31% of the overall .julia directory, while compiled accounts for 59%.

Now, that being said, considering that the whole math2076 directory is 213028M, Julia and all of its components make up less than 4% of the storage space while the single .snapshot/hourly.2025-08-24_1605 takes up almost 10% on its own. So it really looks like the problem has nothing to do with Julia, but rather whatever is creating and managing these hourly, daily, and weekly snapshots. That’s my thoughts anyway.

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