Hourly Backups

That is unusual behavior. Does it delete the daily backups correctly?

Have you tried shortening the number of backups to save?

I cleaned up manually yesterday, but today I am seeing

Current Backups:
(1670857) z.2017-10-20-06-44-51.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1670427) z.2017-10-20-05-44-46.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1670380) z.2017-10-20-04-44-41.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1669661) z.2017-10-20-03-42-52.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1669188) z.2017-10-20-02-44-30.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1669011) z.2017-10-20-01-44-30.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1667539) z.2017-10-20-00-42-35.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1667309) z.2017-10-19-23-44-14.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1665310) z.2017-10-19-22-43-02.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1664439) z.2017-10-19-21-42-34.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1665351) z.2017-10-19-20-44-02.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1666934) z.2017-10-19-19-43-56.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1666799) z.2017-10-19-18-43-50.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1663201) z.2017-10-19-17-43-46.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1663207) z.2017-10-19-16-43-42.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1662792) z.2017-10-19-15-43-38.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1662656) z.2017-10-19-14-43-33.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659482) z.2017-10-19-13-42-46.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659033) z.2017-10-19-12-43-24.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659878) z.2017-10-19-11-43-20.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659628) z.2017-10-19-10-43-14.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659584) z.2017-10-19-09-43-00.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659587) z.2017-10-19-09-42-59.daily.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659223) z.2017-10-19-08-43-04.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659617) z.2017-10-19-07-42-59.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659050) z.2017-10-19-06-42-55.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1658996) z.2017-10-19-05-42-59.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659623) z.2017-10-19-04-42-45.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659576) z.2017-10-19-03-42-41.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659402) z.2017-10-19-02-42-38.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659280) z.2017-10-19-01-42-33.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1659318) z.2017-10-19-00-42-28.hourly.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1655500) z.2017-10-18-09-42-59.daily.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1648394) z.2017-10-17-09-50-09.daily.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1964172) z.2017-10-17-08-33-02.manual.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1959875) z.2017-10-16-09-45-28.daily.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz
(1968413) z.2017-10-15-09-42-39.daily.db99999.db99999.db.1and1.com.sql.gz

Am I simply misunderstanding does retain 7 hourly mean 7 days worth of hourly ones?

No, you are not misunderstanding. The intention of retaining 7 hourly backups is to delete the oldest hourly backups besides the last 7 hourly backups. There could be a permission issue on your server that does not allow a PHP script to delete a file on your servers.

Does it delete the daily backups correctly?

Have you tried shortening the number of backups to save?

I was able to recreate this issue on one of my sites and I figure out why the auto-purge feature wasn’t working for the cammandline backup method.

I have just release a new update, version 4.17.42, to fix this issue.

Thanks so much for fixing this, I have been on holiday for the last 2 weeks, so am only now catching up on my mails etc.