How to delete a folder when client and web interface can't

[schwim]

I asked too much of my owncloud installation and added a folder that had a couple hundred thousand files in it(archived website data). now, the client crashes right after syncing and the web interface is stuck on an endless activity wheel on the folder after I tried to deleted it.

I also tried removing the folder from the owncloud folder before starting the client again but it still crashes.

How can I remove that folder and get the server and client to realize it’s gone?

Thanks for your time!

[dmitry]

Have you tried to enter the settings of the sync client and de-selecting the folder?

You can stop the sync, you can start the client without the network being active.

[schwim]

I’ve deselected it from the client and the client no longer crashes but I can’t remove the folder from the server via the web interface. The page just continually shows the rotating action image but if I wait hours and open another browser tab to look at my file list, the folder is there and it’s still the same size(18GB).

I’d like to entirely remove it. Should I just go from folder to folder inside of it and delete them separately? I haven’t done that yet because that could take A LOT of time.

[dmitry]

What hardware do you run ownCloud on?

[schwim]

Hi there dmitry,

Client side is Win 10 and server side is Debian 9 with ownCloud installed via the web installer.

[dmitry]

The web installer is not a good method of installing owncloud

I meant on what hardware are you running your ownCloud server.

[schwim]

I meant on what hardware are you running your ownCloud server.

and server side is Debian 9

Totally fresh Deb stretch install.

[dmitry]

Is this a local server? Hosted Server? Raspberry PI?
How much RAM, what CPU, SSD or HDD?

This is what I meant by Hardware.

Debian is the OS = Software.

If your Website is keep loading this means you don’t have enough hardware resources to handle the load.

[schwim]

Sorry, I7 2.66 4 core, 16GB ram, 2tb HDD

I’ve monitored the load during big groups of uploads and it never exceeded .25

[dmitry]

That’s very stange. How much RAM did you give to your Database?

[schwim]

I found this via the config.json printout:

        "max_file_uploads": "20",
        "max_input_nesting_level": "64",
        "max_input_time": "60",
        "max_input_vars": "1000",
        "memory_limit": [
            "512M",
            "128M"
        ],

I can share the config.json report if you think that might help resolve my issues.

[tom42]

Maybe it could also help if you share which database you have used for the installation. If you’re e.g. using SQLite and no redis for file locking then you probably just have hit the limit of SQLite with the couple of hundred thousand files.

[schwim]

Sorry, I’m really bad at providing a everything. I’m running it with a MySQL DB

[jvillafanez]

You can try to disable the trashbin app and then remove the folder. Note that the folder will be permanently deleted. Then you can reenable the trashbin app.

The trashbin app moves the deleted files to the trashbin instead of let them be removed. For big folders like yours, this could be slow because ownCloud will need not only to move the files physically to another location but also to update the DB entries with the updated information.
The delete operation should be faster without the trashbin, it might still not be immediate though

[schwim]

Hi there and thanks very much for all the help.I ended up working entering each folder recursively and attempting to delete until it could handle. It took a couple hours but now it’s done.

I think I need to change my goals to trying to make the server-side work better. I’m going to start by researching the suggestions at the top:

And I’ll go from there. I really appreciate all the assistance! I am sure I’ll have questions down the road
Thanks again!