How do i look up "non space files"?

Question

Checking the filesystem on our confluence instance i noticed we have a bunch of files (approx. 6 GB) in the attachments/ver003/nonspaced directory.

How is it possible for user to upload files that are not attached to a space? And how may I administrate/manage the files in confluence (delete)?

The nonspaced directory is twice as big as all other attachments directories.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

I'm not that surprised - the non-space files could include all files that could be attached in the drafts across every space!

I would not want to delete files from here in case people actually are planning to finish their drafts.  But I would want to use something like your SQL to find out what all the drafts are and poke their owners over to https://yourconfluence/users/viewmydrafts.action to get them to review them.

(I've also noted down that I now want to work out a way to auto-discard drafts by inactive users and ones that are over x weeks old...)

Marcus Raitner · Answer

Hi Nic and thanks for your reply. I have done additional research on this issue. The nonspace folder ist more than twice as big as the attachment folders that are linked to a space. I think this is quite unusual/not normal or am I wrong?

And querying the database it seems that a lot of file are in space and nonspace attachements as well and also several times. This query shows me files not in a space:

select c.TITLE as "Attachment Name", cp.LONGVAL as "File Size", c2.TITLE as "Page Title", /*s.SPACENAME as "Space Name", */c.SPACEID,concat("http://<confluence_base_url>/pages/viewpageattachments.action?pageId=", c.PAGEID) as "Location" from CONTENT c join CONTENT c2 on c.PAGEID = c2.CONTENTIDjoin CONTENTPROPERTIES cp on c.CONTENTID = cp.CONTENTID/*join SPACES s on c2.SPACEID = s.SPACEID */where c.CONTENTTYPE = 'ATTACHMENT' and cp.PROPERTYNAME = 'FILESIZE' and c.SPACEID IS NULLorder by cp.LONGVAL desc;

I would like to be able to delete files which are not neccessary oder wrong saved.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

A user can't do it directly, admins are probably responsible for some of it.

Nonspaced files broadly fall into two categories

* Files that don't live in spaces - this is pretty much negligible, but includes things like the global site logo and graphical data from the odd add-on that doesn't belong in a space
* Files that would live in spaces, but don't yet - I suspect this is your size problem.  Atlassian just says "attachments on unsaved content".  To my mind, this means "pages people have drafted, but not published", although there might be other stuff (e.g. attachments on pages in the waste bins).

Problem is, I'm not sure how to identify what in there could be deleted.  I'd recommend asking the users to go to profile -> drafts and seeing what they could complete or discard, but I don't think there's an easy way to see what they've got so you can blame/chase the main culprits.