Auto-delete expired snapshots ?

[AlcSi]

Hi, I'm guessing this has been asked over and over so sorry in advance, but I couldn't find an answer with the search.

In my FreeNAS-11.3-U5 instance, using:

Code:

zfs list -t snapshot

lists a whole lot of snapshots that have outlived their own expiration (ex: raidp1/rh@auto-20200630.0000-1m; this one-month snapshot should have been deleted quite a while ago already).
And it's not a naming issue... at least for part of them, which are the cases I'm interrested in solving.

Note that:

Code:

zfs holds raidp1/rh@auto-20200630.0000-1m

(or with any other very old snapshot) doesn't give any output. As far as I understand, it means that there is no manual "hold" on the snapshot ?

I can definitely delete them but it's a daunting task (that could, indeed, be scripted), but, mostly, the point of my message is that I would have expected the system to simply wipe out snapshots that are older than their expected lifetime...

What did I miss ?

 

[sretalla]

First, its easy to delete a bunch of old snapshots using the syntax:

zfs destroy pool/dataset@oldestSnap%newestSnap

All snapshots between the oldestSnap and newestSnap for that dataset (or if you use recursive, all children too) will be destroyed in one command.

I have yet to understand which process is really doing the job of deleting old snapshots if they aren't linked to a replication task (zettarepl does it in that case).

I think it's the middleware daemon in 12, but seems you're not using that.

Anyway, maybe some of that helps.

 

[AlcSi]

It does help, and I've used the method to clear up space (was above 80%), thanks.
I'd still be willing to understand how automatic snapshot rotation should work so this is not a worry anymore in the future, if another user has the info.