# Large home folders

**URL:** <https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/large-home-folders/4658>\
**Category:** Get Help\
**Created:** [November 29, 2025, 2:29am UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/large-home-folders/4658 "2025-11-29T02:29:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kenny.hanson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6de8d8/32.png) [@kenny.hanson](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/kenny.hanson)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2025, 2:29am UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/large-home-folders/4658/1 "2025-11-29T02:29:15Z")

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Hey guys,

I got curious when I saw an error.log foudn in /var/log/ondemand-nginx/. It looks like the entire log is from one day attempting to access somebody’s home folder and they keep receiving a 502 proxy error returned.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/osc/original/2X/c/c58659da237f0f931be74a749fd6a6055a2cdcfb.jpeg)

One of my students attempted to troubleshoot by removing his session and having him clear the browser cache. Same issue. I had an immediate feeling this was due to an anomaly in the user home folder and I’m pretty sure I found. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more just cause to ask someone to take some business file organization skills class. As far as I can tell he has never used a mkdir and cd command his entire collegiate career. He hasn’t left his home folder since November of 2021 and has accumulated 12,104 files. I have no doubt this is at the core of the issue, but it got me curious to know if there is a limit set and if we could “trap” before attempting that and show them a courteous message of “Please manage your home folder, it has far too many files to show you here.” I have the feeling that the file manager is crashing and ending with a weird truncated message that the http server is interpreting as a proxy issue.

Good to see you last week. Happy Thanksgiving Weekend 🙂

Kenny

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**Author:** ![jeff.ohrstrom](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/jeff.ohrstrom/32/136_2.png) [@jeff.ohrstrom](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jeff.ohrstrom)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2025, 8:54pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/large-home-folders/4658/2 "2025-12-01T20:54:04Z")

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Yes your understanding of the issue is correct - there are too many files causing the app to crash. Unfortunately this is just the way it is. We’re thinking of schemes to avoid this - but they’re all complicated so we can’t fix it any time soon really.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/osc/original/2X/b/bae70bd0ed39a3ae769c2108155f4cb3e9da8385.png) [@system](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 8:55pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/large-home-folders/4658/3 "2026-05-30T20:55:03Z")

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