Arbitrum Full Node Ledger Growing Rapidly - Possible Bloat Issue

[darinvhs]

Description
I've observed that the Arbitrum Nitro full node ledger is growing unusually fast. On one node, the ledger has reached 5TB, while on another node, it has expanded to 8TB. This rapid and excessive growth seems abnormal and might indicate a memory leak or bloated data issue.

Steps to Reproduce

• Run a full node on the Arbitrum Nitro network using the latest Docker image (v3.1.0-7d1d84c)
• Monitor the ledger’s size over time.

Context
Running du -hsx * in the data directory shows the following disk usage:

du -hs /var/arbitrum-fullnode
5.2T    /var/arbitrum-fullnode

du -hsx *
5.0T    l2chaindata

Setup Details

   spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - --chain.id=42161
        - --parent-chain.blob-client.beacon-url=censored
        - --parent-chain.connection.url=censored
        - --node.feed.input.url=wss://arb1.arbitrum.io/feed
        - --http.addr=0.0.0.0
        - --http.api=eth,net,web3,debug,txpool
        - --http.vhosts=*
        - --http.corsdomain=null
        - --ws.addr=0.0.0.0
        - --ws.api=eth,net,web3,debug,txpool
        - --ws.origins=*
        - --execution.rpc.tx-fee-cap=100
        - --execution.rpc.gas-cap=500000000
        - --metrics
        - --metrics-server.addr=0.0.0.0
        - --metrics-server.port=6070
        image: offchainlabs/nitro-node:v3.1.0-7d1d84c

Impact
This could lead to very high storage requirements, making it difficult to maintain full nodes. It might be helpful to investigate to prevent potential issues with disk space or performance.

[ThomasBlock]

38 TB here after one year. i will just reinstall

only hint i got so far is to make sure that the process exits gracefully.

[0x090909]

I agree, currently the system only allows to prune the state, while the ancient blocks are still present.

By also adding ancient data prune we can save up around 0.5 TB at the current sate of sync.

Plus by pruning the state we can lower the whole database size to around 600 gb.

I did open already an issue on the ancient pruning but nobody is looking into it

#2585

[joshuacolvin0]

Arbitrum One runs much faster than Ethereum mainnet, so state bloat naturally builds much faster. Nitro is a fork of go-ethereum, so any database improvements implemented there will eventually be incorporated into our code.