1.8 gigs of posts even after clearing old posts

[Thomocracy]

I'm using Justhost, and they're kind enough to shut down our website every time a php database exceeds 2 gigs. I've tried deleting all posts older than 1 year, but the php posts still show as 1.8 gigs. The board is nearly empty, so I'm trying to figure out how we're still going over 2 gigs every ten days or so.

I'm scraping by with clearing the sessions, drafts, etc. Any ideas beyond switching hosts, paying more money for a larger cap? Any clues as to how I can have less than a hundred posts (text only) and we're still too bloated?

Any help will be appreciated, thanks!

[Arantor]

Error log?

[Burke ♞ Knight]

What is your member base?
What other stuff do you have?
Gallery, Downloads, etc...

[Bigguy]

Drafts...are you using 2.1 or a mod for drafts.

[Arantor]

There are two drafts mods for 2.0.

[Thomocracy]

Wow, speedy help. Thanks, all.

The error log is getting cleared, too, in order to scrape by under 2 gigs. There's a phpadmin button in the control panel, and it breaks down the tables in phpbb1 (our forum). I clear drafts, logs and sessions by emptying them, since I figure they're not needed.

[Thomocracy]

We have a dozen or so members, and I cleared out any that hadn't posted in more than a year. We don't have galleries or anything like that, just forums to post about random bs or our podcast episodes.

[Arantor]

If you're looking at phpMyAdmin it should be able to tell you what tables are consuming space - and how much. If you only have a hundred posts, you really shouldn't have hundreds of MBs of database use.

[Thomocracy]

The forum statistics say 146 posts in 33 topics. I know, it doesn't make sense.

[Arantor]

So what's in the database? Seriously, phpMyAdmin should be telling you what each table is consuming.

[Thomocracy]

In phpMyAdmin I click on "phpbb1", which is our forum. Phpbb_posts, which has 513,000 rows is 1.8 gigs in size.

Huh. Why does it still have all of the posts I deleted in there? They're not on the forum, but I guess they're all still saved in the database. How do I clear them out of there?

[Burke ♞ Knight]

If your forum is phpbb, why are you asking on the SMF site?

[Thomocracy]

Hey, I'll start over. Justhost keeps turning off my website when the php database for our forum (which is using SMF 2.0) gets larger than 2 gigs. If your question is to indicate that these two are exclusive, and by deleting the posts in phpMyAdmin will not disrupt the board, then thanks.

If your question indicates that my question doesn't pertain to SMF, then I am confused that the php database is growing when I'm not using a php board.

TLDR: I'm using SMF 2.0 and thought I'd seek help.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Phpbb is different forumware, and nothing to do with SMF.  Phpbb_posts appears to be a database table from a phpbb forum.  Has nothing to do with your SMF 2.0 forum.  Why you have a 1.8 gig phpbb table that keeps growing when you don't have a phpbb forum is something of a mystery.

[Arantor]

If you're using SMF 2.0, why is your database called phpbb1?

In fact, phpbb_posts isn't an SMF table. The messages table in SMF is called messages (but usually has a prefix called smf_, so usually it's smf_messages)

There is no posts table in an SMF install, which is what's *really* confusing. Are you sure you're looking at an SMF installation? Did you convert from phpBB? If you *did*, then you could possibly just delete that table.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

* Hee, hee - first time Krash ever ninja'd Arantor.

[Burke ♞ Knight]

We ask, due to your continue use of phpbb1 in your posts.
That indicates that there may be a phpbb forum in the equation.

Are you running only SMF, or is there more to this than just one forum?
Was this forum converted from a phpbb forum?

Deleting things from the database will affect you forum.
Do not just go in and delete things via phpmyadmin, unless you know what you are doing.

Make sure to back up all files and your database first.

EDIT: Triple ninja'd!!!
Dang slow fingers tonight...LOL

[Arantor]

* Hee, hee - first time Krash ever ninja'd Arantor.

* Arantor has had cider, and was playing Godus at the time, what's your excuse?

[Thomocracy]

Yes, I did convert to SMF from php. So, I could conceivably back up the posts on my board, delete the php database and cross my fingers?

It still wouldn't explain the php database growing, but who cares?

Thanks all!

[Arantor]

Yes, I did convert to SMF from php. So, I could conceivably back up the posts on my board, delete the php database and cross my fingers?

It still wouldn't explain the php database growing, but who cares?

Thanks all!

It wouldn't explain the old database growing, but the new one will grow over time - and between the two it could easily get too big.

But if you're not using the phpBB forum, it should be safe to delete (with a backup *just in case*) and bring you way back under the 2GB limit.

[Thomocracy]

Update: I backed up the forum through the SMF admin panel and deleted phpbb1. Forum is still there, so you were right. Still not sure how the database kept growing, but at least now I'm not paying for a website that's locked up for going over some arbitrary number.

Thanks again, all.

[Arantor]

Well, if it's growing steadily that would imply something causing errors which go into the error log, which is why I suggested you check it first up

[Kindred]

you should also not depend on the SMF admin backup, especially for very large databases.

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Backup