How can I completely clean IPFS repo?

Question

After running following command, related: How do I unpin and remove all IPFS content from my machine?:

# unpin and remove all IPFS content from my machine
ipfs pin ls --type recursive | cut -d' ' -f1 | ifne xargs -n1 ipfs pin rm
ipfs repo gc

Size of the .ipfs repo still remains as it is:

$ du -sh ~/.ipfs
1.4G    .ipfs

I can do rm -rf ~/.ipfs && ipfs init but my IPFS id is re-initialized where I want to keep my original peer identity without removing it.

I want to completely clean content of the IPFS repo. How can I achieve it? I observe that after removing pinned objects still size of the ~/.ipfs is not changed.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 05 '22 at 16:48

1

The ipfs garbage collector isn’t enabled by default and caches can grow unrestrained unless garbage collection is run manually or enabled to run on a schedule.

Try running Garbage Collection via the command

ipfs repo gc

Note: pinned resources are never deleted by the garbage collector.

Read more over here: https://docs.ipfs.io/concepts/persistence/#garbage-collection.

answered Jun 05 '22 at 16:48

Jordan

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even I unpinned all the files and run : `ipfs rep gc` the rep does not completely cleaned – alper Jun 05 '22 at 20:32

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 03 '22 at 10:22

0

removing pinned objects do not change repo size. Blocks will be deleted during GC later if they are not used by anything else like MFS.

If you are using flatfs datastore, then storage space will be freed. In badgerds they will be overwritten by newer content but usually not freed.

answered Jan 03 '22 at 10:22

Radim Kolář

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How can I use `flatfs` datastore for ipfs? What should I force to free the ipfs repo size? – alper Jan 03 '22 at 10:50
flatfs is in default profile https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/default-profile/ – Radim Kolář Jan 03 '22 at 10:56
I am using `"prefix": "flatfs.datastore",` as default but storage space is not freed, ipfs repo side remains as it is – alper Jan 03 '22 at 10:59
blocks/ subsdirectory will shrink after GC. If not then blocks are referenced in MFS too. do ipfs files ls / to check what is inside MFS. – Radim Kolář Jan 03 '22 at 11:36
can't I just do `rm -f ~/.ipfs/badgerds`? – alper Jan 03 '22 at 21:10
IPFS won't start if root MFS block is missing – Radim Kolář Jan 03 '22 at 23:43
Ah so my only option is to run `ipfs repo gc` – alper Jan 04 '22 at 11:39
GC = Garbage Collection. Maybe assume everyone is a newbie when posting on StackOverflow. Using abbreviations doesn't help anyone. – Jordan Jun 05 '22 at 16:35

How can I completely clean IPFS repo?

2 Answers2