Troubleshoot issues with the Backups service

Backup failure

If the Backups service ever fails to create a backup from your Linode, you should receive a ticket or alert notifying you of the failure. In some cases, the underlying issue can resolve itself. However, there may be an issue on your instance that needs to be addressed before the Backups service can be successfully used. Here are common reasons why a backup failure might occur:

Disk can't be mounted: If your disk is encrypted, formatted using an unsupported file system, or contains multiple partitions, the Backups service will not be able to mount your disk and perform a backup. We recommend reviewing our Backup limits and considerations and making sure your disk is compatible.
Large number of files: The Backups service is file-based. Due to this, the overall number of files on your disk affects both the time needed for the backup and the success of that backup. There isn't a specific maximum number of files supported by the service. If you do notice that your backups are failing or taking a long time to run, we recommend auditing the number of files on your disk and considering ways to reduce the number of files. For more assistance, refer to the Too many files section below.

If you need help determining why your backups are failing, contact our Support team.

Too many files

The amount of files on your system impacts the time it takes for the Backups service to generate a backup. In some cases, having a large number of files can contribute to backup failures. If you are experiencing multiple consecutive backup failures that do not resolve on their own, you may wish to audit the number of files on your system. While there isn't a specific limit to the number of files supported by our Backups service, it may be time to consider ways of reducing or consolidating your files if your system has a few million or more files.

To investigate the number of files and learn which directories contain the largest share of these files, log in to your instance and run the command below.

sudo find / -type f | perl -aF/ -lne 'for (my $i=0; $i < @F-1; ++$i) { print join("/",@F[0...$i]); }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -30

This outputs a list of the 30 directories with the highest file count, beginning with the total file count on your system. Each subsequent line contains the number of files followed by the absolute path of the directory. You can adjust the total number of directories that are displayed by changing the head -30 portion of the command above.

 294960
  92890 /sys
  75872 /sys/kernel
  74449 /usr
  63057 /proc
  56255 /opt
  50504 /opt/psa
  50096 /sys/kernel/slab
  45838 /opt/psa/admin
  35528 /opt/psa/admin/plib
  25405 /usr/share
  24952 /usr/lib
  24607 /opt/psa/admin/plib/modules
  22695 /usr/src
  ...

If the file count is high (which is not the case for the example above), examine the directory paths. If any directories with large file counts contain session data or application logs, you may want to optimize the related applications so that they generate or store less files. To reduce the number of files that have already been generated, you can remove any files that are not important and create an archive of any files you wish to keep. You can do this manually or create a cron job to delete or archive files automatically at regular intervals. Before removing or archiving any files, consult your developers or system administrator.

Updated 20 days ago