Context
Every WEkEO user has a personal storage space within their JupyterHub environment. This space, located in the /home/jovyan directory, is used to store your notebooks, scripts, downloaded datasets, and other working files.
This personal space is limited to 20 GB. Once this limit is reached, you will no longer be able to access your WEkEO JupyterHub environment. It is therefore important to regularly monitor your storage usage and adopt good housekeeping habits.
⚠️ If you can no longer access your JupyterHub environment,contact us via the chat widget(bottom right of our website) and we'll sort it out.
📌 Note: The directories /home/jovyan/public and /home/jovyan/eodata are shared or read-only mounted spaces and do not count toward your personal 20 GB quota. The commands below exclude them automatically.
Check total storage used
To find out how much of your 20 GB quota is currently used, open a terminal in your JupyterHub (via File > New > Terminal):
Then run the following command in the terminal:
du -hs --exclude="/home/jovyan/public" --exclude="/home/jovyan/eodata" /home/jovyan
This command displays the total size of your workspace in a human-readable format. It is the quickest way to check whether you are approaching your storage limit.
Identify which folders use the most space
If your total usage is getting high, the next step is to find out exactly which folders are responsible. Run the following command to get a breakdown of each top-level directory:
du -h --max-depth=1 --exclude="/home/jovyan/public" --exclude="/home/jovyan/eodata" /home/jovyan | sort -hr
This displays the size of each directory in your workspace, sorted from largest to smallest, so you can immediately see which folders to focus on when cleaning up.
Here is how to read the output:
The first line shows the total size of
/home/jovyanThe following lines show the size of each subdirectory
Sizes use human-readable units:
K(kilobytes),M(megabytes),G(gigabytes)
📌 Note: The --max-depth=1 parameter limits the output to direct subdirectories of /home/jovyan. To explore a specific subfolder in more detail, replace /home/jovyan with the path of that folder in the command.
Best practices to stay within the 20 GB limit
Here are some recommended habits to keep your JupyterHub workspace healthy and avoid hitting the storage limit:
Do not store raw data permanently: Large Copernicus or Sentinel datasets should be downloaded only when needed and deleted after processing. Your JupyterHub space is a working environment, not a long-term data archive.
Clean up intermediate files: Processing pipelines often generate temporary files such as unzipped archives or intermediate outputs. Remove them as soon as they are no longer needed.
Remove unused cloned repositories: Git repositories, especially those containing large binary files or model weights, can quickly consume several gigabytes. Delete any repos you are no longer actively using.
Monitor your usage regularly: Run the storage check commands above periodically, especially after a data download session, to catch unexpected growth early.
What's next?
Once you have identified the largest folders, you can free up space by deleting files you no longer need — either directly from the JupyterHub file browser or via the terminal.
For any further questions or assistance, feel free to contact our support team via the chat available in the bottom right corner of the page. 💬