btrfs-backup-ng-prune - Man Page

btrfs-backup-ng prune [Options]

Apply retention policies to clean up old snapshots and backups. Evaluates each snapshot against the configured retention rules and removes those that exceed the limits.

Retention is evaluated with these rules:

1. min - Absolute minimum retention. Nothing is deleted before this age.
2. Time buckets (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) are evaluated newest-to-oldest.
3. The first snapshot in each bucket is kept.
4. The latest snapshot is always preserved.
5. Snapshots needed for incremental backup chains are preserved.

--dry-run

Show what would be deleted without making any changes. Highly recommended before running prune for the first time.

Show what would be pruned (dry run):

btrfs-backup-ng prune --dry-run

Apply retention policies:

btrfs-backup-ng prune

Example retention settings in config.toml:

[global.retention]
min = "1d"      # Keep everything for at least 1 day
hourly = 24    # Then keep 24 hourly snapshots
daily = 7      # Then keep 7 daily snapshots
weekly = 4     # Then keep 4 weekly snapshots
monthly = 12   # Then keep 12 monthly snapshots
yearly = 0     # Don't keep yearly (0 = disabled)

btrfs-backup-ng(1), btrfs-backup-ng-run(1)

btrfs-backup-ng(1), btrfs-backup-ng-run(1).