XF 2.1 Question re: varying database size

[gerryvz]

I am using MySQL 5.7.x on my XF 2.1.6 forum, on Ubuntu 18.04.3, and of course it is working well.

Using mysqldump, I do a daily "cron" job to back up the database, in a rolling 7-day fashion, so that the latest daily backup overwrites the backup from the same day of the previous week. These backups are saved as gzip files. Once a week I download one of these saved gzip files to my local hard drive as a local backup, in addition to the daily backup that is done of all my files via the hosting provider (Linode).

My question is that there is variance from day to day in the size of the database -- it may vary by up to 1 MB in size (gzipped) up or down from the previous day.

Why is this? Wouldn't the database grow from day to day as new posts are made to the forum, new likes and such added, and so forth?

What would contribute to the database size going slightly downward from day to day?

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[Paul B]

There are several tables which contain transient data - the search tables for example.

IP history is pruned based on the setting in the ACP, etc.

 

[gerryvz]

Thanks for the info @Brogan . Makes sense.