Fusion no longer purging old versions?

[mroek]

Currently, when Fusion updates, it leaves the old version behind, eating up quite a bit of disk space.

I believe this behaviour started recently (maybe a few months), and that prior to that, Fusion would remove old files after an update.

I guess this is intentional, but why? Surely there's no need to keep the files for the old versions around, at least not more than one version back. I think Fusion should clean up after itself, as each version takes up a few gigabytes of storage.

Is there some setting I am unaware of to control this?

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@mroek I have escalated this thread to our installer team. We will update here or likely come back here for more questions. 

[mroek]

Thanks! If this is a general issue, then it should be fixed. It could of course also be something specific in my case, in which case I'd like to know how to solve it.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@mroek If you don't mind can you either record a video of image shots of the files that are left behind? We would like to understand what are the files left behind on your machine. Of course the update intent is that we will clean up the files after an update and if it is to happening we want to know what are the files that are left behind so that e can investigate. 

[mroek]

Sure. Here's a quick video showing the current folders:

The folder with the shortest name (6a0c9611291d45bb9226980209917c3d) contains the launcher, and the one called c8ccd68f9db18c054d1ebc9c01376922733ac46e contains the current version. The others contains older versions, dating back to August, as you can see. These folders are all (except the launcher one) a bit more than 4 GB in size.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@mroek Thank you for the video. This gives a good idea on where you are seeing files left over. Can you also provide one more log file for us please. 

1. Go into Fusion - Help
2. Support and diagnostics - service utility
3. Run the gather system info
4. It will generate two zip files. We need the Fusiondiagnostics.zip

[mroek]

Where do I send (or share) this file (it is 13 MB). Uploading it here seems like a not so great idea, as it will contain a lot of info about my system.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@mroek @You can send it to me as a direct message or email it to Raj.kumar.Ilanchelian@autodesk.com

[mroek]

I've sent the file to you by email. Didn't seem like the private message system allowed for attaching files?

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@mroek Have not received an email yet. Let's try another way. 

1. Create a project within Fusion 
2. Upload the file
3. Give me access to the project as a member using my email 
4. I will download from there 

or if you have another other drive that you want to upload it, I can download it. 

[mroek]

The email might take some time, given the size. However, I also uploaded it to a Fusion project and gave you access, so you should be able to get it from there.

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

Got it via the project. Thank you!

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

@mroek Thank you for all the details you have provided to help understand what is happening here. Our engineering team is working on a fix. I am also trying to to understand when the potential fix can be deployed and also if it will clean up older folders or the fix will be for new updates moving forward. I will update here when I know more. Thank you!

[mroek]

Thanks! I don't mind manually cleaning up if the fix doesn't do it automatically, the important thing is that the fix will work on future versions.

I'd be curious if others are observing the same thing, but since nobody chimed in here, maybe this is something specific for me. However, I know that it used to work (i.e. automatically cleaning up) on my system as well, since the leftover folders are just from August and forwards.

[MRWakefield]

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@mroek wrote:

Thanks! I don't mind manually cleaning up if the fix doesn't do it automatically, the important thing is that the fix will work on future versions.

I'd be curious if others are observing the same thing, but since nobody chimed in here, maybe this is something specific for me. However, I know that it used to work (i.e. automatically cleaning up) on my system as well, since the leftover folders are just from August and forwards.

---

Sorry I didn't respond earlier but I've been really busy and it's taken me a while to find a good way of showing what's been left behind with each Fusion update in a clear and concise way. So no, you're not the only one to experience this. IIRC it's always done this on my systems going back to when I started using Fusion in 2017 (not just recently), I just assumed it to be normal behaviour. It still might be normal behaviour but I guess most people don't realise unless they go routing around in their file system.

Anyway, here's a link to an html file showing the entire contents of the 'production' folder if it's of help to @RajkumarIlanchelian.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: I have wondered whether it's because I have custom thread files present in the ThreadData folder. Maybe this trips up the clean-up process?

[mroek]

In the more distant past, I also remember that there were no proper cleanup, so I have several times deleted unused folders manually.

However, at some point (don't know when, but quite a long time ago) Fusion did start cleaning up on updates, so manual intervention wasn't necessary. The lack of cleanup then resurfaced again (for me) with the August update (or September, since August is the oldest one left behind).

[RajkumarIlanchelian]

I will post back here once I have more update on when this will be addressed. 

[MRWakefield]

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@mroek wrote:

In the more distant past, I also remember that there were no proper cleanup, so I have several times deleted unused folders manually.

However, at some point (don't know when, but quite a long time ago) Fusion did start cleaning up on updates, so manual intervention wasn't necessary. The lack of cleanup then resurfaced again (for me) with the August update (or September, since August is the oldest one left behind).

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Yes, I've also performed some manual clean-up in the past. I bought my current system earlier this year so the update history only goes back to April. I've had a look on my old system and that goes back to Feb 2024. It would have gone back further but I had to uninstall Fusion and have a complete clean-up as I managed to corrupt my Fusion install (but that's another story!). I remember having a ton of previous installation folders before I performed a mass clean-up. YMMV but I've not noticed that Fusion has ever managed to clean up properly after an update.

[vladimir_michl]

There is also a related case reported in Sep - Case Number 23016345.

Fusion (Win10) has attempted to remove old versions after each update but it stopped to do so recently.

Vladimir Michl, www.arkance.world  -  www.cadforum.cz

[crueby1]

Just looked in my webdeploy/production folder, and there are 80 subfolders at that level containing 17.4 gig of data. Never noticed all those files (never looked!). The folders date back to 2020, dates on them look about right for updates. Some of the folders are empty, most are not. Thats a LOT of data to be hanging around, would explain why that drive filled up recently.