Manage Low-Hardware Resources

Use this guide when you work on a machine with limited CPU, RAM, or disk.

Goal Hardware

A practical long-term target is:

64 GB RAM
a swapfile about the same size as RAM
an external SSD with more than 500 GB
enough room for Docker images, volumes, build cache, and local repositories

If disk space is tight, move Docker data, caches, and your working directory to the SSD.

On Linux, you can move Docker to a different data path:

{
  "data-root": "/mnt/ssd/docker"
}

Then restart Docker:

sudo systemctl restart docker

Make sure the mount is available before Docker starts. Otherwise the daemon may fall back to the system drive or fail to start cleanly.

On macOS and Windows, use Docker Desktop settings instead of daemon.json.

A same-size swapfile helps absorb memory spikes on Linux. On Windows and macOS, keep enough free disk space available for virtual memory and local caches.

Load Only What You Need

For a broad stack like the Community Hub, start only the services you actually need. If you are working on Discourse, you do not need Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, or Friendica in the same session.

The main lever is each role's config/main.yml, where Compose services are enabled or disabled:

use enabled: true only for services you actually need
set enabled: false for optional services
for shared services, also set shared: false if they are not needed

Example of a slim local Discourse configuration:

compose:
  services:
    discourse:
      enabled: true
    database:
      enabled: true
      shared: true
      type: "postgres"
    redis:
      enabled: true
    oidc:
      enabled: false
      shared: false
    logout:
      enabled: false
    ldap:
      enabled: false
      shared: false
    dashboard:
      enabled: false
    matomo:
      enabled: false
      shared: false
    css:
      enabled: false

This is a development profile, not a production target. Enable SSO, LDAP, or analytics only when you need them.

Test Smarter

On small machines, limit validation to the role you are touching.

For Discourse, start with:

APP=web-app-discourse make deploy-fresh-purged-app

If the local inventory and stack already exist, reuse them:

APP=web-app-discourse make deploy-reuse-kept-app

Use make deploy-fresh-kept-all only when you need broad coverage and have enough time and resources.

Measure Before You Delete

Before cleaning up, check what is actually consuming space:

docker system df
docker ps -a
docker images
journalctl --disk-usage
df -h

That makes it easier to see whether the real issue is Docker, journald, a package cache, or project state.

Cleanup

The cleanup SPOT is scripts/system/purge/README.md. Use that page for the canonical entry points.

For the one-time Windows cleanmgr /sageset:1 setup, set PURGE_WINDOWS_CLEANMGR_SETUP=true before you run make purge-system.

For related local helpers, see scripts/tests/deploy/local/purge/README.md and scripts/tests/deploy/local/reset/README.md.

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