Not purging old backups

[jjroysdon]

Describe the bug
Previously, timeshift would purge old backups when the "Maximum backups exceed for backup level ..." This no longer appears to be the case.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Set hourly backups to be limit to 1
2. Run 'sudo timeshift --check' and first hourly backup will be created
3. 'sleep 1h; sudo timeshift --check' and new backup will be created but old will not be deleted. A note will state that it should be deleted, but it won't be:

Maximum backups exceeded for backup level 'hourly'

Expected behavior
What should occur when the maximum limit is exceeded is that the oldest backups over the limit will be deleted.

System:

• Linux Distribution Name and Version: Linux Mint 20.3
• Application Version timeshift/una,now 21.09.1.1+una

[sir-ragna]

I cannot reproduce this. I tried running hourly snapshots for a whole with while [ true ] ; do timeshift --check ; echo "sleeping ..." ; sleep 1h ; done but snapshots do get removed.

There are cases however where snapshots are not getting removed that might take people off-guard.

For a snapshot to get removed automatically there are 3 conditions that need to be met.

• The snapshot cannot have a comment
• There must be more snapshots that the limit
• The snapshot must be older then the maximum amount of snapshot times the tag interval. This means, if you keep a maximum of 5 daily snapshots that timeshift will not remove daily snapshots if they are not older than 5 days, even if there are more than 5 snapshots present.

[jjroysdon]

I cannot reproduce this. I tried running hourly snapshots for a whole with while [ true ] ; do timeshift --check ; echo "sleeping ..." ; sleep 1h ; done but snapshots do get removed.

There are cases however where snapshots are not getting removed that might take people off-guard.

For a snapshot to get removed automatically there are 3 conditions that need to be met.

* The snapshot cannot have a comment

* There must be more snapshots that the limit

* The snapshot must be older then the maximum amount of snapshot times the tag interval. This means, if you keep a maximum of 5 daily snapshots that timeshift will not remove daily snapshots if they are not older than 5 days, even if there are more than 5 snapshots present.

Thanks for the reply. I have comments on mine from time to time (pre and post kernel or driver upgrades). I don't need them when they age out. Would be better to have a "lock" option to keep a given snapshot from aging out (feature request), and treat comments the same as anything else. As I have comments in many of mine, I'm betting that is the issue.

[jjroysdon]

Yup, the comments were the "problem". After removing comments for older snapshots that exceed the limit they are now purged. This "feature" seems broken to me.

[sir-ragna]

Yup, the comments were the "problem". After removing comments for older snapshots that exceed the limit they are now purged. This "feature" seems broken to me.

I did bang my head against this as well. I had a hook in my package manager that created commented snapshots.

A configuration option that forces the removal of commented snapshots would be nice.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had
any activity in over 2 years.

If this issue is still relevant:

• Please test on a current version of this package.
• Add a comment with your findings

If no activity occurs in the next 30 days, this issue will be
automatically closed. Issues can be reopened if needed.

[jjroysdon]

This problem still occurs with Timeshift 24.01.1 on LM 21.3.

Any item with a comment will not be automatically purged until the comment is deleted.

[jjroysdon]

However, just tested with Timeshift 25.12.4 on LMDE 7 and the problem does not occur. Seems like it has been fixed and comments no longer hold an issue back.

I'd recommend closing this bug.

[jjroysdon]

Tested with Timeshift 25.12.4 on LMDE 7 and the problem does not occur. Seems like it has been fixed and comments no longer hold an issue back.

[jjroysdon]

Spoke too soon. Works fine with purging items with comments related to the "Boot" schedule. Isn't working with purging items with comments related to hourly.

Timeshift 25.12.4 on LMDE 7

Reports when forcing a check that the hourly amount is exceeded (duh) but won't purge the oldest as it has comments.

Remove the comment and run another check and it purges.

$ sudo timeshift --check
Mounted '/dev/sdb' at '/run/timeshift/2062/backup'
Boot snapshots are enabled
Last boot snapshot is 0 hours old
Hourly snapshots are enabled
Last hourly snapshot is 16 minutes old
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Maximum backups exceeded for backup level 'hourly'**

[ygerlach]

I believe that comments stop snapshots from beeing deleted is a feature. We added a tool tip to let users know here: #505

I think we can close this issue.