Linux Plesk Server: Disk Space Exhausted During Backup Download

Applies To

• Parallels Plesk Panel 11.x for Linux
• Parallels Plesk Panel 10.x for Linux
• Parallels Plesk Panel 9. x for Linux/Unix
• Parallels Plesk Panel 8. x for Linux/Unix

Warning Sign

When you perform a system backup from the Parallels Plesk Control Panel, then after its completion you normally go to the Backup Manager and Click to download the current backup file. But sometimes files never get downloaded and you experience a slow server performance.

Reason

The above situation occurs most likely due to the unavailable free disk space on one of your partitions.

Explanation

If you have a small root partition:

[root@/]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/isw_Volume0p2
9.5G 6.1G 3.0G 68% /
/dev/mapper/isw_Volume0p6
437G 51G 364G 13% /var

You may have set up backups to be stored on another partition:
Directory for storing backup files – “/var/lib/psa/dumps”
Temporary directory for dumps – “/var/tmp”

[root@/]# grep DUMP /etc/psa/psa.conf
DUMP_D /var/lib/psa/dumps
DUMP_TMP_D /var/tmp

However, when you download backup files from the Plesk Control Panel, they are copied to a temporary location as a temporary file (these parameters are not manageable):
Full backups -> /usr/local/psa/PMM/tmp
Domains backups -> /usr/local/psa/tmp

Since those folders are located on the small root partition, your server runs out of free space.

Solution:

You need to create a Symlink from the default location to some folder that has enough free disk space.

For Example:

[root@ /]# ln -s /var/tmp/ /usr/local/psa/PMM/
[root@ /]# ln -s /var/plesk_temp/local-tmp /usr/local/psa/tmp
[root@ /]# chmod -R 777 /var/plesk_tmp/local-tmp