Server backup hangs 18 hours to complete, waiting for a user disk quota to be compliant + many lost warning opportunities

Hi guys,
Here are 3 "funny" bugs, and 5 improvement proposals for a change:

We do daily off-site backups of all virtual servers on one of our shared hosts using Virtualmin's built-in scheduled backup function.

1) BUG: Yesterday a user with a reseller account wanted to change one of his customer (actually was a family) site's quota from 500 MB to 1 GB (the disk usage was like 498 MB), but he forgot to change the drop-down from "MB" to "GB". He could save successfully without any warning the new quota of 1 MB, even if it was already way exceeded by the use. No emails received either, as quota was already way over. I think at least a warning should be made, and probably a new quota BELOW the use or below use + threshold for warnings should be refused and generate an error at saving, to avoid such bugs to start with.

2) After troubleshooting unsuccessfully, he opened today a ticket as the site was timing out at 60 seconds at each trial to access it. The site should not time-out but somehow display a clear error message. Apache can't run with disk 100.00% full. No hints here what the cause could be either. ;-)

3) The error log was truncated too in Virtualmin, and there was no warning either. But at least as last line was truncated and no new log entries were made, that gave me a hint that it could be a disk space issue....

4) Additionally, the "Quotas" panel didn't open to show the quota exceeded when looking at Virtualmin's panel homepage... You said in another ticket "good idea" it could auto-open, but I think it was for bandwidth quotas, not sure now...

5) BUG: When I opened it, there was NO red and the graph didn't work. It was displaying just something like "50000% used 500MB of 1024KB" (which I overread 500 out of 1024 means OK, specially that the graph was showing 0% usage (was all grey). Suggesting to fix graph to show ALL RED on any overuse, and text in red too. Additionally in all "xxx MB of yyy GB", never use a bigger unit on left than on right: e.g. "6 MB of 2 GB" can be ok, but "500 MB of 1024 KB" should display "500 MB of 1 MB" and that IN RED.

6) looking at reseller quota, all was looking fine (respected, no warning or red signs, could be done there too).

7) finally when i opened to edit the site, the QUOTA accordion section was closed (could auto-open), and only when I opened it there was finally text in RED showing that quota was exceeded).

As you see, most importantly for the reseller, there was NO hint of his mistake and no visible warning for the quota exceeded.

But also for us as admins, many opportunity to show the problems have been missed.

8) BUG: Finally, the most annoying one is that the backup of the whole site hanged because of QUOTA exceeded of ONLY 1 site...

Once we fixed to 1 GB the morning backup finished 19 hours later....

(btw i still owe you a reply on the Mysql collations questions, not forgotten, but just crazy days hope to feedback next week).

Status: 
Active

Comments

Full server backups of all domains should not use users' disk space/quotas.

Actually even individual server backups of domains mean that the domain should not use over 50% of its quota to be backupable....maybe those should also use out-of-site tmp storage too ?

(we do directly remote SSH as backup destination)

Wow, that's a lot of bugs :-)

1) Yes, this shouldn't be allowed - I will add a big warning about it in the next Virtualmin release.

2) There isn't much I can do here, as this is presumable an Apache bug.

3) Ditto

4) Just tested this, and the Quotas and Limits section definately does open

5) Which page or graph are you referring to here? The "Edit Virtual Server" page, or something else?

6) Reseller quotas are for limiting the the amount of quota that can be handed out, not actual usage.

7) Odd, this works OK for me

8) This sounds like a bug. Was the backup created by root, or the domain owner or reseller?

1) thanks

2) yes, i know, but maybe virtualmin can help apache behave better ;)

4) yes, they open, but are not open by default: suggestion is to auto-open them if there is any red info in there ;-)

5) main screen of virtualmin ("homepage" at port 10000). : "Quota" accordion : "Only top 10 servers shown" area

6) Correct, but display of the actual use could show a small warning that individual quotas are reached/exceeded within all accounts of that reseller. Just a trouble-shooting help... ;-)

7) yes, they open once clicked, but are not open by default just after when clicking "edit server" menu: suggestion is to auto-open them if there is any red info in there ;-)

8) server backup for all virtual servers was created as root

Sorry for the long list, but as web apps developer i do appreciate hints on where stupid users do look for info (and miss them ;-) ) and know most users don't even report back once their issue is solved, so thought the above feedbacks would be useful to you guys. :-)

Ok, I see what you mean about the section now being open now .. I will fix this in the next theme version.

As for the backup issue, I can't re-produce this, even for an over-quota domain. Could you post the full output from the backup here?

Thank you.

I don't know what made the backup hang, but it just hanged waiting, and when quote was ok again, it just continued and finished fine.

The output looked 100% completely identical of any other day's output - no errors - not any additional warning. Example of 1 of quite a few sites below in "Code 1"

We installed that system by installing Ubuntu 8.04LTS server 64 bits, then updating it, and then as very first installing Virtualmin Pro using the command from licenses page.

( Other UNRELATED small issue with backups to report while at it: This morning we had a warning on a site on this one: see below "Code 2". )

Code 1:

Creating backup for virtual server zzzz.org ..


    Copying virtual server configuration ..
    .. done

    Backing up Cron jobs ..
    .. none defined.

    Saving mail aliases ..
    .. done

    Saving mail and FTP users ..
    .. done

    Backing up mail and FTP user Cron jobs ..
    .. none to backup

    Copying records in DNS domain ..
    .. done

    Copying Apache virtual host configuration ..
    .. done

    Copying Apache log files ..
    .. done

    Copying Webalizer configuration files ..
    .. done

    Copying Logrotate configuration ..
    .. done

    Dumping MySQL database zzzzz_joomla ..
    .. done

    Copying Procmail and SpamAssassin configuration files ..
    .. done

    Backing up Webmin ACL files ..
    .. done

    Backing up AWstats configuration file ..
    .. done

    Creating TAR file of home directory ..
    .. done

    Uploading archive to SSH server ..
    .. done

Code 2: However this morning we had a warning on a site on this one:

  Dumping MySQL database yyyy_joomla ..
   .. done

   Copying Procmail and SpamAssassin configuration files ..
   .. done

   Backing up Webmin ACL files ..
   .. tar failed : tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.


   Backing up AWstats configuration file ..
   .. done

   Creating TAR file of home directory ..
   .. done

That error about ACL files can happen if somehow all the /etc/webmin/*/username.acl files have gone missing. The fix is to run :

virtualmin disable-feature --domain yyyy.com --webmin
virtualmin enable-feature --domain yyyy.com --webmin