Issue Plesk backup / Could not back up all data from the directory

[Erwan]

Server operating system version

Almalinux 9.7

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.77

Hi all,

We have a problem with a Plesk / Backup on external (S3).
We have a single 500GB server in this situation:

Two domains:
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/cloud.mydomain.com/
and
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com, which store data and are mounted on a 5TB disk (2TB of data currently).

We perform a full backup every night to remote storage (Amazon S3 Backup extension).

Settings:

- Multi-volume storage (5GB)
- Exclusion of:
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_tmp
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_tmp/*
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_dumps
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_dumps/*
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_tmp/pmm*
/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_dumps/backup_info*

The backup works, but we get this error:
Warning: Subscription "domain.com"
Could not back up all data from the directory '/var/www/vhosts/domain.com':
data.mydomain.com/dump_dumps/backup_info_2604252211.xml: Cannot open: Permission denied
data.mydomain.com/dump_dumps/backup_info_2604252211_2604272211.xml: Cannot open: Permission denied
data.mydomain.com/dump_dumps/backup_info_2604252211_2604282211.xml: Cannot open: Permission denied
...

We have this for TMP Backup directory:
# grep DUMP_TMP_D /etc/psa/psa.conf
DUMP_TMP_D /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_tmp

I understand that the backup process tries to back up the temporary backup during the operation or at least to read the directory (I tried to set read permissions on the folder but it is automatically recreated each time so the permissions are reset).
However, I have no other option to ensure sufficient disk space; I must place this directory in /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com. If I leave it in a directory on the server (which has 500GB of disk space), I imagine the temporary storage will exceed the available space when backing up the current 2TB of data.

Is there really no way to exclude /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_tmp from the backup?
It is mentioned in the "Exclusion" field of the backup settings, but it doesn't seem to be applied...

 

[Erwan]

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

@Erwan , are the directories/files excluded from the server-wide backup settings or from the subscription-level backup settings, or both? For the error itself, have you tried repairing the permission of the domain:

plesk repair fs example.com -y

 

[Erwan]

Sebahat,

The backup is a global backup of the server.
The files are excluded in the "Exclude specific files from the backup" field.

Yes, we tried to repair the permissions, but no change. As mentioned, it's the backup that creates /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com/dump_dumps with root privileges.

There must be a directory scan that's encountering the temporary backup directory with root privileges, causing the error. Hence my request to see how to completely exclude a directory from the backup.
It seems that "Exclude specific files from the backup" are not completely excluded.

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

The warning occurs because DUMP_TMP_D is configured inside the subscription webspace, so Plesk still scans and accesses temporary backup files there even if the directory is excluded from the server-wide backups. The only way to effectively exclude the directory is to set DUMP_TMP_D to a directory outside the subscription.

However, I have no other option to ensure sufficient disk space; I must place this directory in /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/data.mydomain.com. If I leave it in a directory on the server (which has 500GB of disk space), I imagine the temporary storage will exceed the available space when backing up the current 2TB of data.

I assume that you have dedicated storage volume mounted under /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/, but I cannot think of another way around the issue.