Newbie question about disk space & dumps directory

[janhuntjens]

Hey everyone,

My server is quickly running out of disk space for no apparent reason.
Wandering through the filesystem led me to the /var/lib/psa/dumps directory which is now about 29GB in size and filled with .tgz files.
Why does plesk store so much data in this folder? Is it safe to delete files in this folder? And how can I prevent this from happening in the future?

Regards and thanks in advance!
Jan

 

[Denis Sirochenko]

The directory var/lib/psa/dumps is used to store Plesk backups.

The following Knowledge Base article provides detailed information on backup structure in Parallels Plesk Panel 9:

http://kb.odin.com/en/6082

Fast growing of the directory means that probably there is a scheduled Plesk backup task. You can check it at Settings > Scheduled Tasks.

Deleting some files of the directory will cut off the possibility of restoring a certain Plesk backup. It is for you to decide whether it is safe to remove this or that backup. Anyway, first try to remove backups via Plesk Panel Backup Manager for the sake of integrity.

Regards,

Denis.

 

[janhuntjens]

Thanks for your reply
There is a scheduled backup running, but not to the server repository, to an external ftp server.
There were no local backups stored according to the plesk backup manager, I had deleted them all the day before yesterday. It was as if plesk didn't delete the backup files from the HD, but did only hide it in the backup manager.
Then I deleted most of the files in the dumps directory (and subdirectories) and now I've got a lot more disk space free.

Anyway, thanks for help!