---
type: reference
title: Payload and Disk Reclaim
description: Standing procedure for disk pressure on a fleet host — measure all buckets first, classify against the runbook index, prove nothing live references the payload, stage to trash with fingerprints, purge only on approval; plus the purge-and-refresh protocol with fetch verification.
tags: [operations, disk, podman, payloads, huggingface, trash]
timestamp: 2026-10-05T00:00:00-07:00
---

# Payload and Disk Reclaim

Standing procedure for "clean up old models" / "disk is full" on a
serverAppConfigs host. Order matters: **measure, prove nothing live uses it,
stage, ask.** Staging frees nothing until the user approves the purge — say so
up front or the request reads as unfulfilled.

## 1. Measure the whole filesystem, not the category asked about

```sh
du -sh /home/dank/models /home/dank/.local /home/dank/.cache \
       /home/dank/comfyui-data /home/dank/GitPackages 2>/dev/null
df -h /home/dank | tail -1
podman system df          # reclaimable image space
du -sh ~/.local/share/containers   # where rootless storage physically is
```

The answer is usually NOT the category the user named. On Dankclaw
(2026-09-28) retired models were 510G, but podman images were **279G
reclaimable (95%)** and uv+pip caches **73G** — 352G of regenerable garbage,
bigger than the models. Lead with that finding; it changes the decision.

Check for sparse files before claiming a saving:

```sh
stat -c 'apparent=%s blocks=%b' <file>; du -sh --apparent-size <file>; du -sh <file>
```

A 3.3G "log" (`logs/x4e-run.log`) was **4K real** (8 blocks × 512) — deleting
it frees nothing. `du` vs `du --apparent-size` finds these instantly.

## 2. Classify against the runbook index

Every payload directory maps to a runtime in the AGENTS.md retired-runbook
table. Three buckets:

- **live** — referenced by a running service's env/unit.
- **rollback** — named as a rollback target in a runbook. ASK before
  touching: they are the difference between a one-minute flip and a 30G
  re-download.
- **retired** — maps to a retired runtime. Safe candidates.

Trap: a directory can hold **both** a dead target and a live asset — an era's
drafter can sit beside the retired target it came with (per-endpoint era tables:
[[frank-dragoon]], [[frank-zealot]], [[frank-archon]]). Move the
single file, never the directory, and say so in the manifest.

## 3. The live-reference check — before moving anything

```sh
for d in <candidate dirs>; do
  grep -rl "$d" --include="*.sh" --include="*.env" --include="*.service" \
            --include="*.container" --include="*.yaml" . | grep -v '^./old/'
done
```

Then **read every hit**; do not count them. Most are benign (comments,
retired fetch-script destinations, `retire_*_quadlet` helpers that move a
quadlet not a model) — but on Dankclaw this check found a live bug:
`serve-frank-zealot.sh`'s `: "${MODEL_DIR:=...}"` fallback still pointed at a
payload retired a week earlier. The env file always overrode it, so it was
invisible; a missing env file would have produced a "missing asset" naming a
model that no longer exists.

**Durable lesson:** `:`-defaults in a serve script are never exercised in
production, so they rot silently. When reclaiming a payload, grep serve
scripts too — the fallback is a live reference in all but name.

Also check service **env files** (`scripts/*.env`) for `MODEL_DIR`/`MODEL`
paths, not just unit `Volume=` lines: a payload can be mounted by path and
named by env. `models/logs` and small tool dirs are not cache — logs are
evidence, keep them.

## 4. Stage, never delete

```sh
STAGE=/home/dank/.AGENTTRASH/$(date +%Y%m%d)-<topic>
mkdir -p "$STAGE"
mv <path> "$STAGE"/
```

Same filesystem ⇒ instant and recoverable — **and reclaims no space**; say so
rather than implying space was freed. Write `MANIFEST.md` into the stage dir:
per item — path, size, owning runtime, when retired, the `mv` command to
restore. Record what you **deliberately kept** and why; that is what a future
reader needs. Always check for pre-existing staged trash
(`du -sh ~/.AGENTTRASH/*`): 118G from a 2026-09-21 cleanup sat un-purged;
report the running total, not just the new batch. Root-owned leftovers need
`sudo`, and check `swapon --show` first (a trashed swapfile must not be
active).

## 5. Verify, then report — and do not purge

```sh
systemctl is-active frank-dragoon frank-zealot
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1:7770/health
```

Report: staged items and sizes, what was kept and why, what is **still not
freed**, remaining candidates untouched. Purge only on explicit approval.

## Repo-flow gotcha: do NOT push before you deploy

`scripts/deploy.sh` sets `BASE_REVISION=$(git rev-parse origin/main)`. If you
pushed separately, the diff is empty and the planner reports "changed
services: (none)" — looks like a planner bug, is not one. The tool is
designed for the **unpushed** state: edit → test → `deploy.sh` (it pushes,
then dispatches). If you already pushed, pull on the host instead, and reason
about whether a restart is actually owed. Any serve-script/env change needs
`./tests/run.sh` before commit; a `:`-default change is usually **inert**
(env overrides it) and owes no restart — but say so explicitly.

# Purge and refresh protocol

When the task is clearing/reclaiming/**refreshing** model caches on a serving
host, add these steps.

## Fingerprint before deleting

`ls -l --block-size=1 <dir>`; for LLM payloads compare each file against the
Hub's declared size. Fingerprints are the only way to answer "did the refresh
change anything" afterwards — **a refresh is also an update check**: if
upstream never changed, the bytes come back identical, which is itself the
finding. Sidecars are versioned **in place**: equal main-checkpoint sizes do
not prove the repo is unchanged, and a stale sidecar is invisible from its
name (observed: `overlay.hgn` 2,477,677,120 → 2,572,466,560 while the main
checkpoint returned byte-identical). If a file is irreplaceable upstream
(delisted revision, gated repo), say so before deleting.

## Confirm re-fetchability first

Query the Hub anonymously; a gated repo 403s even with the host's token:

```bash
curl -s "https://huggingface.co/api/models/<repo>/tree/main?recursive=true&blobs=true" \
  | python3 -c "import json,sys; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(len(d),'entries'); [print(e.get('size'),e['path']) for e in d[:5]]"
```

An error/empty result means it is NOT safe to delete. Filter by **quant
name**, never `endswith('.gguf')` — mradermacher ships large quants as
`.partNofM` fragments that filter hides.

## Refresh per engine — know the recovery path BEFORE deleting

- **frank-dragoon**: self-fetching — clear the directory but
  leave it **existing and empty**, then start the unit; the download knobs and
  the payload's byte count (which is what the re-download costs) are on
  [[frank-dragoon]]. **Bind-mount trap:**
  podman refuses a mount whose source is missing
  (`Error: statfs /home/dank/models/halogen: no such file or directory`) and
  the unit loops on `Restart=on-failure` — `mkdir -p` the empty dir.
- **llama.cpp services**: no self-fetch; the serve script refuses to start
  without weights. Pull yourself and verify:

```bash
curl -fL -C - --retry 10 -o "$DEST/<file>" \
  "https://huggingface.co/<repo>/resolve/main/<file>"   # -f is mandatory
sha256sum "$DEST"/*; head -c 4 "$DEST"/*.gguf   # compare to LFS oid + GGUF magic
```

`curl` exits 0 on HTTP 401/403 and writes the error body as the artifact — a
gated repo once produced three 153-byte shards with identical sha256s and a
cheerful DONE line for 104 GiB. Always `-fL -C -`, compare byte counts to the
Hub's declared sizes, compare sha256 to the LFS oid. Assemble `.partNofM`
fragments with `cat part1 part2 part3 > name.gguf` in numeric order (per-part
hashes verify the whole — concatenation is deterministic). Public repos need
no token: omit `-H "Authorization: Bearer …"` from argv entirely (it is
world-readable in `/proc/<pid>/cmdline`).

## Restore, then verify behaviour — not health alone

Put the quadlet back (`mv` from trash + `systemctl --user daemon-reload`),
`reset-failed`, `start` (root units need `sudo`). Watch the engine's own
fetch/load lines, then `/health`, `/v1/models`, and a **real completion** on
every restored endpoint. Read the engine's memory ledger (kv pool / weights /
blocks left) rather than assuming the config still fits. Sweep the vhosts too
(`www`, `grafana`, `prometheus`, `hermes`, `marreta`, `gitea`, `loki` via
`curl -sk --resolve <host>:443:192.168.0.143`) — a purge touches state the
whole host shares.

## Things that bite

- **Do not run a 100 GB+ re-fetch concurrently with a big iGPU benchmark** —
  the A* run commits ~116 GiB and leaves ~10 GiB available; cache churn risks
  the OOM/state failures this fleet has already seen.
- **Reboot is the repair of last resort** if rootless podman's pause process
  dies mid-work (`invalid internal status … could not find any running
  process`); `podman system migrate` panics in 5.7.0.
- A same-filesystem trash reclaims no space; root-owned leftovers need
  `sudo`; never `rm` without explicit permission.
- **A giant image layer is not automatically a model blob.** The 2026-10-17 census found a 121 GB layer
  (`16b6663d…`) that read like an undeleted payload; it is the **engine image** — the radiance runtime itself.
  Map each layer to what the serving trio actually mounts before deleting anything: that census is both the
  disk-reclaim proof and the check that no deleted payload path still backs a live container.

## Related

- [[Model Swap and Rollback]] — the runbook index this classification reads
- [[Quadlet Lifecycle]] — restoring the unit after a payload refresh
- [[Remote Job Runner]] — supervising long re-fetches
- [[Deploy State Triage]] — the push-before-deploy trap in context