Symptoms: Disk full, the world folder takes up gigabytes, backups take far too long, not enough storage

Possible Causes

  • No world border set — players explore without limits
  • Unnecessary chunks have been generated (exploration abuse)
  • Old backups have never been cleaned up
  • Unused chunks are eating disk space

Step-by-Step Fix

Step 1

Check the size of the world folder

bash
du -sh world/

Step 2

Set a WorldBorder to stop new chunks from being generated

bash
/worldborder set 10000

Step 3

Clear out unused chunks with MCA Selector — you can delete chunks with InhabitedTime < 1 minute

Step 4

Clean up old backups and set a backup policy (last 7 days + weekly)

bash
find backups/ -name "*.tar.gz" -mtime +30 -delete

Step 5

Pre-generate the area inside the WorldBorder — that way players never trigger new chunks

bash
/chunky worldborder
/chunky start