# Purging old users and non-deleted history and data

**URL:** <https://help.galaxyproject.org/t/purging-old-users-and-non-deleted-history-and-data/14178>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Tags:** devops-administration, galaxy-local\
**Created:** [December 13, 2024, 8:29pm UTC](https://help.galaxyproject.org/t/purging-old-users-and-non-deleted-history-and-data/14178 "2024-12-13T20:29:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jtdo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/help.galaxyproject.org/jtdo/32/6485_2.png) [@jtdo](https://help.galaxyproject.org/u/jtdo)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2024, 8:29pm UTC](https://help.galaxyproject.org/t/purging-old-users-and-non-deleted-history-and-data/14178/1 "2024-12-13T20:29:41Z")

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I recently became admin of our orgs local Galaxy server. There are numerous users who are no longer with the org that have many TBs of non-deleted histories and associated data.

I tried running the cleaup\_datasets scripts, but these don’t seem to do anything about all the histories/data left undeleted before the users left.

How do I purge this old data and recover the disk space? Additionally, how can I remove these user accounts?

Our server is running version 20.05.

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![jennaj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/help.galaxyproject.org/jennaj/32/27_2.png) [@jennaj](https://help.galaxyproject.org/u/jennaj)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2024, 10:29pm UTC](https://help.galaxyproject.org/t/purging-old-users-and-non-deleted-history-and-data/14178/2 "2024-12-13T22:29:27Z")

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Welcome, @jtdo

You can purge users under the Admin section of the application interface. That will mark all of their data as deleted and remove the account, then the cleanup script will find the deleted data and remove it. If you enable GFPR mode, that old account email address will be stripped as anonymous, too, allowing the email address to be reused, or at least “forgotten”.

And you can consider using this utility, too, even creating a custom process that does exactly what you want to do, in a batch. → [GitHub - galaxyproject/gxadmin: Handy command line utility for Galaxy administrators 🚀](https://github.com/galaxyproject/gxadmin)

We have resources here that you will find useful, too!

> [@Private Galaxy Servers](https://help.galaxyproject.org/t/private-galaxy-servers/10861/1):
>
> ### Local Galaxy
> 
> A local Galaxy server is a choice for personal use, and can be scaled to support multiple users.
> 
> Your service can be hosted publicly or privately. Connect to local, institutional, or commercial cloud computing resources and customize your usage policies.
> 
> 💻 Local Galaxy
> 
> - Training Network [Galaxy server administration training](https://training.galaxyproject.org/training-material/topics/admin/)
> - Technical Documentation [Galaxy releases, plus Admin and Development docs](https://docs.galaxyproject.org)
> - Open-source code base [GalaxyProject Github repositories](https://github.com/galaxyproject)

You might also be interested in the Admin chat group. Please see the **Systems** workflow group here for a join link and related resources. → [Galaxy Working Groups - Galaxy Community Hub](https://galaxyproject.org/community/wg/)

Hope this helps! 🛠

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**Author:** ![jtdo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/help.galaxyproject.org/jtdo/32/6485_2.png) [@jtdo](https://help.galaxyproject.org/u/jtdo)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 4:55pm UTC](https://help.galaxyproject.org/t/purging-old-users-and-non-deleted-history-and-data/14178/3 "2024-12-17T16:55:08Z")

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Thanks, @jennaj !

And thanks for the resources, I’ll start reading up.

Our instance is based on the Docker build from bgruening, so it looks like some features are different/disabled, including the ability to delete users from the admin interface. I will try reaching out to them for support.

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**Author:** ![jennaj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/help.galaxyproject.org/jennaj/32/27_2.png) [@jennaj](https://help.galaxyproject.org/u/jennaj)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2026, 4:43am UTC](https://help.galaxyproject.org/t/purging-old-users-and-non-deleted-history-and-data/14178/4 "2026-03-17T04:43:49Z")

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