Resolved Size of subscription is shown much larger than the real size – where are the files?

[King555]

I have 7 individual subscriptions within my Plesk and three of them show a much larger total size than the real size on the statistics page and in the weekly report via mail.

How can I find out which files make them so large?

For example, there is one subscription with a real total size of 2,5 MB (all files in httpdocs and logs) with no databases or mails, which is shown with a size of 131 MB. Where are those 128.5 MB stored?

 

[Kaspar]

How did you come up with the "real" total size?

The disk space shown on the subscription statistics page is the total of all files in the home directory of the subscription (plus databases if there are any). That means files outside the /log and /httpdocs directories as well. That means that if you use the File manager you'll have to look to everything inside the home directory, not just those two directory you've mentioned.

Any backups (made with the Plesk backup manager) are stored in /var/lib/psa/dumps/ and count towards the disk space total as well. These will be shown on the statistics page as well.

A more useful tool to quickly see how much disk space is used on a home directory of a subscription is the Diskspace Usage Viewer Extension. I recommend installing this extension to investigate the disks pace usage of subscriptions.

 

[King555]

The "real" size is the size according to my FTP software.

I just checked the file manager within Plesk and it contains httpdocs and logs and some really small directories. I already had these directories in my file size sum.

The "dumps" folder for the backups indeed contain files which sum up to the 131 MB for one of the subscriptions.

BUT: The two other subscriptions have many GB too much. One of them has 19 GB of files and 2 MB of backups, but is shown with an amount of 39 GB. The last one has about 5 GB too much, but the backups are also only about 2 MB.

So is there another directory I could check?

I already have the mentioned extension installed, but it does not list any unusual files.

 

[Kaspar]

And those two subscriptions do not have any databases or mailboxes?

 

[Bitpalast]

In addition to @Rasp 's advice, also check your backup configuration. Many customers are creating local backups from the "Account" > "Backup" option. These local backup files count against your quota, but they are not stored in the directories of your subscription.

You can see where all your disk space usage is coming from in the "Statistics" menu item. At least it will show you from which section the disk space usage comes.

 

[King555]

in the "Statistics" menu item. At least it will show you from which section the disk space usage comes

Thanks, I did not know that there is a detailed info about the disk space used by the individual services. Now I found out that one of the two subscriptions has the correct size and the last one has 19 GB of backups.

So the question is now, where these backups are stored in my case. They are not in /var/lib/psa/dumps/.

These local backup files count against your quota, but they are not stored in the directories of your subscription.

I do not create local backups, only on an external FTP space. I do this for all subscriptions, but only one uses this large amount of space according to the statistics.

 

[King555]

Today I tried again to find out where those 18.8 GB of backups are (see screenshot). In short: I cannot find them.

I checked /var/lib/psa/dumps/ again, nothing there. I checked all directories with the Diskspace viewer extension, none of the large files are those backups and I could not find any directory with this size (at least none which could contain anything which belongs to this subscription). And of course I checked the corresponding /var/www/... directory, there are only the 19.4 GB which are correctly shown in the statistics (see screenshot).

It can't be any remote backups, because the 6 other subscriptions have backup sizes (in the statistics) of 2 to 130 MB, while the real backups (remote) are about 30 GB large (in total).

Any ideas where I can search? Maybe the value is calculated incorrectly? This is the only thing which would make sense.

 

[Bitpalast]

Please provide a screenshot of your backup list "Websites sichern" and "Konto und Websites sichern".

 

[King555]

Unfortunately I don't know which list you mean. I clicked through Plesk and found this list ("Backup-Manager für <name of subscription>"):



I guess you mean this, although it's not called what you said.

And there are the 18.8 GB, which are shown as local backup (from March 3rd). I think I can just delete it via this page, but I'm curious where the files are stored (or maybe it's only a database entry?).

But the remote backups look strange. In reality there is only one single remote backup (one file) with a size of 18.8 GB, but here I see 7 files, and one has 23.6 GB. What does this mean? I know it's probably not related to my original problem.

 

[Bitpalast]

Yes, the one of March 3rd is the local backup that is using disk space.

The list normally only includes remote backups that are actually present on the remote backup location.

 

[King555]

Now I deleted the entry with the 18.8 GB. I checked the free disk space via df -h before and after I did that. The free/used space did not change, so I guess it was just an abandoned database entry. The statistics page still shows the 18.8 GB backups. Maybe this only updates once a day.

So I think the problem is solved, I will check tomorrow, whether the usage has been updated.

Then there is only the (new) question why there are so many remote backups shown, while only one exists. I tried to find a database table in the psa database, where I can maybe see where this entry points to. But there seems to be no such table. Which would mean that the 18.8 GB entry could not be only in the database...

 

[King555]

Today the statistics page shows only 2 MB of backups, which is the correct value.

And I found out that the backup list contains all backups on the remote server, not only of that specific subscription. In my case I have 7 backup files (because of 7 subscriptions) and that leads to 7 entries in the backup list.

Thanks to both of you for guiding me into the right direction!