Disk cleaner
See exactly what can be freed, clean it on demand, and schedule it so a full disk never surprises you.
A server fills up quietly: downloaded .deb packages nobody needs again, log
files that have grown for months, rotated archives, old kernels. Disk Cleaner
measures each of those, tells you how much is in it, and removes only what you
tick.
What the two cards tell you
Disk space is the headline — percent full, free space, and the line that matters here: "7.3 GB of 86 GB used · 337 MB can be freed".
Automatic cleanup is off by default — "Off — clean up by hand whenever you need to."
What can be cleaned
Each row is a category with its measured size and a tag for its group — Packages, Logs, Temporary files.
| Category | What it removes |
|---|---|
| Package cache | Downloaded .deb package files that are no longer needed (/var/cache/apt/archives). |
| Service logs | Empties the current log files of running services — kept, not deleted. |
| Site logs | Empties every hosted site's current access and error logs — kept, not deleted. |
| Rotated logs | Old compressed and rotated log archives under /var/log. |
| Unused packages | Automatically-installed packages and old kernels no longer required. |
| System journal | systemd journal entries older than the retention window. |
| Temporary files | Old files in /tmp and /var/tmp. |
A category with nothing in it is greyed out and tagged Already clean.
Show exact folders expands each row to the real paths it will touch, which is the honest way to answer "but what exactly are you deleting". Re-measure runs the scan again; the line above the list says how fresh the numbers are.
Check first means check first
Site logs carries a Check first tag. It empties the access and error logs of every hosted site — fine on a quiet server, but if you are mid-investigation into a traffic problem, that is the evidence you were reading. Download what you need from System logs first.
Clean up now
Tick the categories you want, or use Select all cleanable. The button at the bottom right updates to show the total — Clean up 335 MB.
Click Clean up and read the confirmation. It lists each item with its size and path, and the total.
The line under the title is the rule to remember: "This cannot be undone. Active log files are emptied, not deleted." If any ticked item is one of the check-first kind, the dialog names it.
Confirm. It can take a minute on a busy server. When it finishes the result is stated plainly, and the categories re-measure themselves.
Recent cleanups at the bottom keeps the history — what was freed, when, how many items, and whether it was run By hand or by the schedule.
Automatic cleanup
Configure on the Automatic cleanup card sets it to run on its own.
- Clean up automatically — the master switch. The fields below stay disabled until it is on.
- How often — every hour, day, week or month.
- Run when disk usage is above — a percentage. Leave it empty to clean every time it runs. Setting it to 80 means nothing happens on a half-empty disk.
- What to clean — the categories to include.
Only the safe categories can be scheduled
The dialog offers five of the seven: "Only items that are safe to remove unattended can be scheduled." Site logs is not one of them — emptying those is a decision you make while looking at the server, not something to automate.
Limits and caveats
- Nothing is deleted until you confirm, on this screen or in the schedule. Measuring is read-only.
- Emptied is not deleted. Active log files are truncated so the service writing to them keeps working; it is the rotated archives that are removed.
- The sizes are a measurement, not a guarantee. The disk may free slightly more or less, especially where a process still holds a deleted file open.
- It cleans the system, not your applications. Old releases, build caches and
node_modulesinside an application directory are yours to manage — see that application's files screen.