Issue Plesk Backup Restore no notifications on error and space management issue

[easyware]

Server operating system version

CentOS Linux 7.9.2009

Plesk version and microupdate number

Plesk Obsidian v18.0.47

Hi, this is my situation:

• Plesk Obsidian v18.0.47
• FTP Backup every night

What I have done
A client has deleted all of his e-mails and asked yesterday at 3PM if there was a way to recover them.
I launched the backup restore on his single mail account.

What I get
Disk space full at 99%
After almost 18 hours Plesk still says that the restore is in progress

What I found
In the "deployer.log" it seems that the backup actually halted after 1 hour for this disk space error

[2022-11-10 16:07:32.726|24914] INFO: TransportError Transport error: Failed to write to the file: No space left on device

What I am wondering about
Does Plesk need to copy all the archive in his disk to restore a backup?
How much space do I need to properly restore a backup?
If so, isn't that a great limitation? I mean, my backups are almost 40-45GB, shouldn't be better for the unpacking to happen on the FTP side and then transfer only the needed files?

My most pressing issue
I cancelled the restore process, that Plesk told it was still in progress, but the disk isn't freeing, still 99%.
Do I just need to wait?

Thanks to everyone will help on this

 

[easyware]

UPDATE
I managed to clean up the "/var/lib/psa/dumps" folder and these are my infos about the disk space situation:

• Free Disk Space: 47GB
• Backup: 44.5GB (as stated in the restore settings page)

Is it possible that all these hours and space are needed to restore just a single mail account?
I mean, to try and restore, no success yet..

 

[Bitpalast]

The full backup archive must be downloaded. It will be unpacked on the local server. It is not possible to unpack archives remotely on an FTP connection. You need enough disk space for the downloaded archiv and the unpacked version of it.

 

[easyware]

So I will need at least 90-100GB of free disk space? More or less..

 

[easyware]

I was wondering if there is a way to manually restore single mail accounts, we are talking about a maybe 500MB account, no need to bring GBs and hours of operations in the equation..

I have a Postfix/Dovecot configuration.

 

[Bitpalast]

The archive needs to be uncompressed. For that reason you need a copy of it locally. It is not possible to only extract the mailbox part from a compressed file.

 

[easyware]

It seems to me a not sustainable approach, I mean, the higher the server dimensions, the higher the free space needed to have properly function of backup/restore.
I am able to manually extract and restore single websites/dbs, fortunately, I was hoping I could do the same with mail account (or at least messages), otherways it's pretty useless.
Thank you anyway for the help

 

[Kaspar]

What you could do, as workaround methode to circumvent any disk space limitation, is to restore the backup on to a (empty) temporary server/vps. After the backup has recovered you can then go to the clients subscription (on the temporary server) and run a backup of just the subscription. Which should be way smaller in size than a full server backup. You can then use the subscription backup to recover on your actually server.

 

[easyware]

Thank you Kaspar, that's a great idea!
I could set up a VM on my local server just for that, is it permitted from Plesk license to have a local "debug" copy of the system locally?
If yes, how could I retrieve the installation packages?

 

[Kaspar]

I could set up a VM on my local server just for that, is it permitted from Plesk license to have a local "debug" copy of the system locally?

Sadly the Plesk trial license has been limited to only 3 domains recently. You could contact Plesk license support to see if there is any temporary license available for this scenario. Otherwise you're probably left with using a full license.

If yes, how could I retrieve the installation packages?

To install Plesk you mean? See: How to Install Plesk On Linux?

 

[Kaspar]

You know what? You might be able to use a trail license after all. If I am not mistaken, you can select which domains (called objects) you want te recover from a backup. Since in this scenario you only need to recover one domain (right?), a trail license will probably suffice.

 

[easyware]

Thank you again for the help, yes at the moment of the restore you can choose what to restore, so I guess it is possible.
I will manage to setup a "restore local server", so I will (maybe) finally manage to solve this issue.
Thank you!