# Prime: "clean up the 1700+ backups" — dev-backup retention FIXED, 1,740 husks removed

`[2026-10-01]` **Prime: "clean up the 1700+ backups" — dev-backup retention FIXED, 1,740 husks removed.** They were never 1,788 real snapshots: the prune had deleted everything except one 0555 dir (`vastblue/praxis/references/PraxisPM_Rev0_07.11.26`, 17 files hardlinked into every snapshot), so each old dir was a 22-entry husk and only the newest 48 were complete. Removing them lost no history and freed ~0 bytes (same inodes, link count 1,788). Deletion ran from a generated list of 1,740 literal paths, each verified as a husk first, with 0 errors. The script now runs `chmod -R u+w` before `rm`, logs the error count and the kept count, and fails the unit (exit 3) on a bad prune or exit 1 on a failed rsync. Positive control: a manual run at 0556 pruned the full snapshot `2026-09-29_0602` with 0 errors, leaving 48. Retention stays the designed 48 hourly; the 4.6 GB log rotated at 0530 is kept, compressed to 99 MB, at `~/.config/dev-backup/dev-backup.log.20261001-0530.gz` until someone deletes it.