Cleanup orphans backups

henri9813

Hello,

I have a backup plan which backups all vms with a tag: backup=yes ( exemple ) to a NFS remote.

The backups appear in the Health section, and then, i click on delete ( to cleanup the space ).

But ... nothing is deleted on the remote.

the only things i can found a list of directory to clean in the xen-orchestra logs

xen-orchestra  | 2026-09-26T15:32:05.190Z xo:backup-archive INFO you could delete orphan VDI directory {
xen-orchestra  |   path: '/xo-vm-backups/e92f154d-0b9d-2c69-fb04-d8bf58b6e8f0/vdis/756c7d04-3b06-4b5d-b66d-b6ef6c4d53b1/e9228694-76f1-43e9-9e2e-18a1c91f5a01'
xen-orchestra  | }

Why XO doesn't clean the data in the remote ?

And now, how to make it clean ? ( i upgraded the xo, and then, i don't have my previous logs which mentions the list of directory to clean )

Thanks !

poddingue

Hi @henri9813, from what I can read in the XO source, that log line is only informational right now.

The code that finds those folders logs "you could delete orphan VDI directory", but the actual removal is still a TODO, so nothing gets cleaned on the remote automatically (here's the spot).

My guess, and I haven't checked what the Health delete button calls exactly, is that it removes the backup metadata and counts on that same cleanup to take the disk folders away.
That would explain why the space never comes back.
I don't know whether it's safe to remove those vdis/... folders by hand, so I'd rather not tell you to rm anything.

Might be worth a mention to @Team-XO-Backend, they'll know if there's a supported way to clear them.

henri9813

Hello @poddingue

Thanks for your investigation, this confirm my guess.

I removed them manually to reclaim disk space.

But in my opinion, the health should detect "useless directory". in the vdi directories. But this is "required" only if the backup metadata was clean without the directory cleaned.