Storage fills up with backup data

[Timo002]

Hello,

For my Plesk v12.5.30_build1205150826.19 os_CentOS 6 installation I'm having issues with the backup. My storage is completely filling up with backup data, even while I'm storing the backups on a FTP location. The last days I'm getting a error that there is not enough disk space available.

If I look at the healtmonitor disk usage, I can see that every night at 5:00 the storage size is growing with 2GB, the size of te backup.

I read on this forum that the backups are stared in the folder "/var/lib/psa/dumps", this contains a lot of files and I already deleted al files starting with "backup_sapp-distrib." because these where te biggest files there. But there is also a domains directory containing al kinds of backups.

Below you can find a dump of all files in the /var/lib/psa/dumps folder.

So my question is, how can I clean up all "old" backup files of my VPS.
And: Why is this happening, storing the backup files on FTP should not keep filling up my VPS.

totaal 28544
drwxr-xr-x.  5 psaadm psaadm  36864 dec 30 09:10 .
drwxr-xr-x.  3 root   root     4096 jul 17  2012 ..
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      426 dec  4 05:11 backup_0-tt9amC.2_1512040506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      426 dec  5 05:11 backup_0-tt9amC.2_1512050506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      426 dec  6 05:11 backup_0-tt9amC.2_1512060506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     2656 dec  1 05:10 backup_dd_conf_1512010506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     2656 dec  2 05:11 backup_dd_conf_1512020506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     2656 dec  3 05:11 backup_dd_conf_1512030506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     2656 dec  4 05:11 backup_dd_conf_1512040506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     2656 dec  5 05:11 backup_dd_conf_1512050506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     2656 dec  6 05:11 backup_dd_conf_1512060506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      330 dec  1 05:10 backup_file_sharing_1512010506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      330 dec  2 05:11 backup_file_sharing_1512020506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      330 dec  3 05:11 backup_file_sharing_1512030506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      330 dec  4 05:11 backup_file_sharing_1512040506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      330 dec  5 05:11 backup_file_sharing_1512050506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root      330 dec  6 05:11 backup_file_sharing_1512060506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     3972 dec  1 05:10 backup_keyXX31kMNe.key_1512010506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     3972 dec  2 05:11 backup_keyXX31kMNe.key_1512020506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     3972 dec  3 05:11 backup_keyXX31kMNe.key_1512030506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     3972 dec  4 05:11 backup_keyXX31kMNe.key_1512040506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     3972 dec  5 05:11 backup_keyXX31kMNe.key_1512050506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     3972 dec  6 05:11 backup_keyXX31kMNe.key_1512060506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     1432 dec  1 05:10 backup_sb_server_1512010506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     1432 dec  2 05:11 backup_sb_server_1512020506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     1433 dec  3 05:11 backup_sb_server_1512030506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     1431 dec  4 05:11 backup_sb_server_1512040506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     1432 dec  5 05:11 backup_sb_server_1512050506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root     1433 dec  6 05:11 backup_sb_server_1512060506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root    94070 dec  1 05:10 backup_skel_1512010506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root    94070 dec  2 05:11 backup_skel_1512020506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root    94070 dec  3 05:11 backup_skel_1512030506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root    94070 dec  4 05:11 backup_skel_1512040506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root    94070 dec  5 05:11 backup_skel_1512050506.tgz
-rw-r-----.  1 root   root    94070 dec  6 05:11 backup_skel_1512060506.tgz
drwxr-xr-x. 12 root   root     4096 dec  4 05:06 clients
drwxr-xr-x.  8 root   root     4096 dec 28 03:14 .discovered
drwxr-xr-x.  6 root   root     4096 aug 12 05:03 domains
-rw-------.  1 root   root   942779 dec 30 03:40 mysql.daily.dump.0.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   916934 dec 29 03:22 mysql.daily.dump.1.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   895628 dec 28 03:48 mysql.daily.dump.2.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   993527 dec 27 03:47 mysql.daily.dump.3.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   972364 dec 26 03:40 mysql.daily.dump.4.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   948499 dec 25 03:22 mysql.daily.dump.5.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   927411 dec 24 03:23 mysql.daily.dump.6.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   907180 dec 23 03:25 mysql.daily.dump.7.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   887447 dec 22 03:34 mysql.daily.dump.8.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   428103 dec  5  2013 mysql.preupgrade.11.0.9-11.0.9.20131205-032708.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   428103 dec  5  2013 mysql.preupgrade.11.0.9-11.0.9.20131205-032710.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   434963 dec  5  2013 mysql.preupgrade.11.0.9-11.0.9.20131205-131331.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   441123 dec  5  2013 mysql.preupgrade.11.0.9-11.5.30.20131205-125251.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   444123 dec  5  2013 mysql.preupgrade.11.0.9-11.5.30.20131205-131638.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   467363 dec 21  2013 mysql.preupgrade.11.0.9-11.5.30.20131221-015918.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   466111 apr  8  2014 mysql.preupgrade.11.0.9-11.5.30.20140408-212740.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   481073 apr 17  2014 mysql.preupgrade.11.5.30-11.5.30.20140417-114457.dump.gz
-rw-------.  1 root   root   470048 jun  6  2014 mysql.preupgrade.11.5.30-11.5.30.20140606-094424.dump.gz
... And a whole lot more

 

[vzhidkov]

Hi,

It looks like uploading of backup to FTP fails for some reason.
You can check backup log files for more information:
/var/log/plesk/PMM/backup-<date and time>/*.log

If upload to FTP storage fails backup will be stored on your server in case if option Save backups in the server storage if the upload to FTP fails is enabled.
You can disable this option in Plesk > Tools & Settings > Backup Manager > Backup Settings

Also you can configure Maximum number of scheduled backup files to store option to limit number of backup files to store. In this case the oldest backups will be removed after new backup will be created.

Also to reduce the disk space usage and the duration of backup process you can use Use incremental backup feature in scheduled backups.

Check Plesk Administrator's Guide for more information.

 

[Timo002]

Oke, will check the settings and guide. For now it looks that the FTP backup is working fine but it is not deleting the backup from the VPS after is has been uploaded to the FTP location.

Also in de folder /var/lib/psa/dumps, can I delete al these files? It seems that there is a lot of old mess, what can I delete to clean up all old stuff?

 

[vzhidkov]

Also in de folder /var/lib/psa/dumps, can I delete al these files? It seems that there is a lot of old mess, what can I delete to clean up all old stuff?

You can delete backups from Plesk > Tools & Settings > Backup Manager
It is more safe than removing these files directly from server, and will help you to avoid any possible issues.

 

[Timo002]

This only shows the backups that are at the FTP location.

 

[vzhidkov]

This only shows the backups that are at the FTP location.

By default directory /var/lib/psa/dumps contains all backups, including daily database dumps that Plesk creates during daily task script execution.

 

[Timo002]

OK, so it is safe to delete all files from this directory. Of course I might be missing some backup data, but I will not delete data that will crash Plesk.

I just want to clean up stuff, because there are file that ar two years old in that directory.

 

[Wikibear]

Plesk Backup my big friend. I deleted all files in the past without any error thereafter. Most case the disk was full and server is very slow. Then i delete all files in dump and after this i create a backup by hand to test if it's all fine.

 

[Timo002]

Oke, I deleted everything in the folder /var/lib/psa/dumps. (recursively all folders and files). Everything seems to be working fine and I deleted 30GB of backups, very old backups I think. Now waiting to see if this folder is not filling itself up again. All backups should be transferred to FTP.

 

[philipwee12379]

Hi @Timo002, is everything working fine after you did the rm -rf /var/lib/psa/dumps?

Everyone do refer to my attached PDF- It seems that there is indeed an error with this so-called incremental backup. It keeps on adding the same amount of data, 8.38GB in my case, meaning that Plesk determines that 8.38GB data has been changed but that's not true... hmmm...

 

[Timo002]

@philipwee12379, yes everything is working fine after I deleted every file and folder in de /var/lib/psa/dumps folder.

 

[philipwee12379]

Thank you @Timo002 and good for you

@philipwee12379, yes everything is working fine after I deleted every file and folder in de /var/lib/psa/dumps folder.