Backups clogging up server. Can not locate or delete scheduled backup tasks

[mchenzi]

Hello
After the update from Plesk 10 to 11 i seem to have a backup job that i can not switch off or change at all. Every day i log into Plesk as admin and go to "Backup Manager " i see a new backup file which is in my case 18GB and the next day there is another one and on the 3rd day my server is blocked and down cause of full disc error. I have a scheduled task backing up ito an FTP space (2GB at a time) but i can not stop the backup that goes onto the Server repository. (the FTP backup job works fine and i can change settings)

How can i locate/delete all cronjobs/tasks that could trigger this backup?

Thanks for any info

Seb

 

[Sven L.]

it sounds to me that you have a separate manually created task to do the FTP copy?

you should configure the backup wizard to backup directly to that FTP server. it will create a server repository first, yes. but when it finishes the whole backup and copy to external repository, the local server repository copy will automatically be deleted.

the local server repository backup does only stay if the external copy failed. so maybe you should check if something is going wrong (which is very probably with 18GB)

my biggest server is around 6GB and my automated daily backup uploads it to my home FTP server during the night and it only keeps the server repository if something went wrong.

 

[mchenzi]

mhh. possible that the FTP is full. I will remove all on the FTP and see. Its good to know that the backup is stored locally if it can not be transfered. Now i know.
Will find out.
s.

 

[KonstantinosS]

mhh. possible that the FTP is full. I will remove all on the FTP and see. Its good to know that the backup is stored locally if it can not be transfered. Now i know.
Will find out.
s.

All settings regarding backups and cron jobs are in the tools & settings menu. I would start looking there. If there is a manual cron job, you could use ssh and login as root then manually find the cron job and remove it.

 

[mchenzi]

Hello
So i added another new FTP repository which is empty and has enough space. The backup does not user the ftp repository but just leaves it sitting on the Server.
Is 18GB too big? (i do have an archive of 500.000 Files and 8GB in there which i am trying to put on a seperate webspace....) (but could that be the problem?)

Seb

 

[Sven L.]

Well, I would certainly wait for an official response, in the meanwhile, what I personally would do:

1) make sure the backup job is splitting into 2GB parts
2) try to make a 250MB automated backup of something and see if that works
3) log into SSH and try to manually access the remote FTP and upload a 250+MB file, if it works, try to upload a 2GB file

I didn't have problems with backup jobs for a long time, but last time it failed, it was for 2 reasons:

1) remote FTP had enough space, but some weird quota setting that didn't allow me to upload more than 10GB. I had 3 backups at all time, but each was 4GB so the 3rd and all new ones always failed. as the FTP wasn't mine, I reduced to keeping 2 backups and the problem was solved

2) remote FTP had a real slow connection. had many timeouts and a few times actually a new backup started before the previous one had finished, causing even more problems. solution: change to a different FTP host

my main server right now has a 5GB backup, which is split into 3 files. it is then uploaded to a FTP server I have at home (on a NAS) through my home 50MB connection. I keep 3 days backups


18GB to me looks like a lot. but I don't know what sort of hosting you're doing, so maybe it's normal for your environment.

 

[mchenzi]

i have a pretty busy RootServer. Around 50 Domains on it with lots of Email hosting as well but as you see its mainly that one client with that massive onine spare part archive.
Thanks. I will look into FTP quota restrictions on the other side. That might be the reason. i had no issues when the backup was smaller than 8-10GB /as far as i can remember it was about that size before)
s.

 

[mchenzi]

ok. something is weird. Even if i set the backup to configuration only which should be about 2MB instead of 18GB i get the full backup plonked onto my Hard Drive.

if i list all cronjobs with

for user in $(cut -f1 -d: /etc/passwd); do crontab -u $user -l; done

i get

11,31,51 * * * * /usr/lib64/plesk-9.0/postfix-poplockdb-clean
0 1 * * 1 /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/secur-check
0 1 * * 1 /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/send-report weekly
10 1 * * * /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/clean-sysstats
15 1 * * * /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/pack-sysstats day
15 1 * * 1 /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/pack-sysstats week
15 1 1 * * /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/pack-sysstats month
15 1 1 * * /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/pack-sysstats year
20 1 * * * /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/clean-events
0 3 * * 7 /usr/local/psa/libexec/modules/watchdog/cp/clean-reports

I thought i would find the Scheduled backup in there.

I def. only have one backup scheduled which is a (configuration only onto the FTP Server and that actually works) Why the big backup comes up i dont know.

 

[mchenzi]

ok. i solved it.

First i set all backup Tasks in phpMyAdmin to false. Then i set up a new one. (it still did not work to transfer it to the FTP)

Apparently http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?260857-FTP-repository-backup-don-t-work
describes the problem.

/etc/init.d/psa stop

mkdir /var/lib/psa/tmp ### because there is enough space
chown psaadmsaadm /var/lib/psa/tmp ### user rights should be correct
chmod 755 /var/lib/psa/tmp ### permissions
rm /opt/psa/PMM/tmp ### this is the spot where the backup only has 1GB space which means it will never be able to put to FTP cause it can not put more than 1GB !!!! CHECK the path. It was slightly different on my system
ln -s /var/lib/psa/tmp /opt/psa/PMM/tmp ### link the tmp directory to the new tmp directory within var (where you have space) via symlink

/etc/init.d/psa start

Then it started working.(make sure your FTP repository can handle the size backup you want to do otherwise split it up into something smaller than 2GB )