Files & persistent storage
Your AxonOS home folder lives on a personal persistent volume, so your files, installed packages, and settings are there the next time you launch — even after a session ends.
How persistence works
- Your home directory (
/home/aXonian) is backed by a private Docker volume tied to your wallet. - When a session ends — whether you release it or credits run out — the desktop is destroyed but the volume is saved.
- On your next session, the same volume is remounted and your work reappears.
Anything outside your home directory is part of the ephemeral desktop image and is reset each session. Save files, notebooks, and datasets under your home folder to keep them.
Offline storage billing
Storing data costs disk space, so AxonOS charges a small fee for a persistent volume while you're offline (no active session). This is deducted from your credit balance.
| Lifecycle event | Desktop | Volume | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active session | Running | Mounted | Compute credits deducted via heartbeat |
| Credits exhausted | Running (grace ≈2h) | Mounted | Billing paused — top up to continue |
| Grace period ends | Destroyed | Saved | Compute released; storage billing begins |
| Offline | — | Saved | Small storage charge accrues (balance can go negative) |
| Debt limit exceeded | — | Deleted | Volume is pruned to reclaim space |
The default storage rate is about 0.05 compute-minutes per GB per hour. Your balance is allowed to go slightly negative (accumulating a little debt) so a brief lapse won't delete your data.
If your balance falls below the debt limit (default ≈ −24 hours of compute equivalent) while you're offline, your persistent volume is deleted to reclaim disk. Top up before then, or move important data off-platform.
Moving data in and out
The desktop includes decentralized and peer-to-peer tools so you're never locked in:
📡IPFS Desktop
Publish and fetch datasets over the InterPlanetary File System for content-addressed sharing.
🔄Syncthing
Continuously sync a folder between AxonOS and your other machines, peer-to-peer.
⬇️Browser file panel
Upload into or download from your home folder. Large uploads resume after connection drops; downloads use the browser's download manager.
SSH sessions also support standard SFTP and port forwarding. Operators can configure a direct TLS
file plane on TCP 443 with AXGT_FILES_PUBLIC_BASE and FILES_TLS_SERVER_NAME; the UI falls back
to the same-origin gate path when it is unavailable.
Browser file access is authorized to the active wallet-scoped session. The gate uses a private, per-session credential when it talks to that session's file agent; users neither configure nor receive that internal credential.
Upload guardrails
| Variable | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
AXGT_FILES_MIN_FREE_BYTES | 1073741824 | Keep at least 1 GiB free on the backing filesystem |
AXGT_FILES_MAX_FILE_BYTES | 0 | No configured per-file cap; operators may set one in bytes |
Available filesystem capacity and the free-space reserve still constrain uploads when the per-file cap is disabled. Resuming an upload does not bypass either the file-size limit or free-space check.
Volume capacity
The launch wizard exposes the wallet's current storage capacity when persistent storage is enabled. Capacity can grow while a session is live; shrinking is intentionally refused because it could truncate data. Billing uses actual stored bytes rather than the selected capacity ceiling.
Tips
- Back up anything irreplaceable off-platform — persistent storage is a convenience, not a long-term archive.
- Keep a small credit buffer if you want your volume to survive longer periods offline.
- For large reproducible datasets, pin them on IPFS and re-fetch per session rather than storing them long-term.
Next, see what's installed in Your desktop & tools, or review costs in Pricing & AXGT.