workspace-ageout

Hot-to-cold tiering changelog for workspace.rmf44.xyz.

What this is

workspace.rmf44.xyz lives on hawker (VPS, 237 GB root disk) with user files stored in /var/lib/workspace-hot/. A nightly job ages out files unmodified for more than 90 days, moving them to dessert NFS at /mnt/dessert-cold/ (the durability tier). An hourly disk-pressure safety valve does the same when free space on hawker drops below 50 GB.

Every aging-out run writes a changelog/YYYY-MM-DD.txt entry and commits it to this repo, so you have a permanent record of what moved where.

Restoring an aged-out file

Files aged out of the hot tier are NOT deleted — they live on the cold tier (NFS) on desslok at /slab/container_storage/workspace-cold/. To restore a file:

# on hawker, as tigo:
ssh desslok 'ls -la /slab/container_storage/workspace-cold/path/to/file'
scp desslok:/slab/container_storage/workspace-cold/path/to/file \
    /var/lib/workspace-hot/path/to/file

Replace path/to/file with the relative path shown in the changelog.

Reading the changelog

git log --stat     # overview
git show HEAD      # most recent run
ls changelog/      # all dated entries

Each entry looks like:

workspace-ageout run: 2026-08-12T03:00:07Z
Threshold: 90 days

Disk before: 184G free
Disk after:  187G free
Reclaimed:   3G

Files aged out: 47
  race/files/Projects/old-quarterly-report.docx
  race/files/Photos/2025/IMG_4401.jpg
  ...

Files failed: 0

How it works

• /usr/local/bin/workspace-ageout.sh runs nightly (cron 0 3 * * *). Finds files in /var/lib/workspace-hot/ with mtime > 90 days, rsyncs each to /mnt/dessert-cold/ (preserving relative paths), verifies via md5sum, and deletes from hot. Appdata is excluded.

• /usr/local/bin/workspace-pressure.sh runs hourly (cron 0 * * * *). When df -BG on hot shows < 50 GB free, ages out oldest files until 80 GB free, regardless of mtime.

Both scripts use a rsync --remove-source-files-style two-phase move (rsync first, then delete) so a network blip never causes data loss.

Where data lives

• Hot tier: /var/lib/workspace-hot/ on hawker (local disk)
• Cold tier: /mnt/dessert-cold/ on hawker → desslok:/slab/container_storage/workspace-cold/ over NetBird NFS
• Changelog: this repo (auto-committed per run)
• Logs: syslog via logger -t workspace-ageout and logger -t workspace-pressure

Restore UX (per Lord Race, 2026-08-11)

User SSHes to hawker and runs scp from desslok. No custom tooling, no plugin.