Abnormal webserver backup file size increase (~500 KB → ~4 GB overnight)

[ryzanbui02]

To Reproduce

1. Go to the app
2. Wait for the automated backup process to run
3. Observe the generated backup file size

Current vs. Expected behavior

Description

The webserver backup file size suddenly increased from around 500 KB to around 4 GB overnight without any project changes.

Previously, the backup process completed in ~2 seconds. Today it takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.

Observed Behavior

• Normal backup size: ~500 KB
• Current backup size: ~4 GB
• Previous backup duration: ~2 seconds
• Current backup duration: ~10 minutes

Timeline

• Yesterday:

  • Backup behavior was normal (~500 KB, ~2 seconds).
  • Updated Dokploy from v0.28.3 → v0.28.5.

• Today:

  • Backup size increased to ~4 GB.
  • Backup process takes ~10 minutes.

Environment

• Dokploy version: v0.28.5
• Previous version: v0.28.3

Additional Notes

• No project or configuration changes were made between the two backups.
• The only modification was the Dokploy version update.

Questions

• Could the backup mechanism have changed between v0.28.3 and v0.28.5?
• Is the backup process now including additional directories or volumes?
• Are there any known issues related to backup size inflation in recent versions?

Provide environment information

OS: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Dokploy version: v0.28.5
VPS provider: Hetzner

Which area(s) are affected? (Select all that apply)

Local Development

Are you deploying the applications where Dokploy is installed or on a remote server?

Same server where Dokploy is installed

Additional context

No response

Will you send a PR to fix it?

No

[dosubot]

Hi @ryzanbui02! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the dokploy team.

The backup mechanism itself didn't change between v0.28.3 and v0.28.5 in terms of what gets backed up—only organizational changes to S3 storage paths were made.

Most likely cause: The /etc/dokploy/volume-backups/ staging directory contains leftover tar files that weren't cleaned up. This directory is used to temporarily store volume backup tar files before uploading to S3, and these files can be several GBs in size. There's a known bug in v0.28.2 affecting backup cleanup which may still be impacting your installation.

Since the web-server backup copies the entire /etc/dokploy directory, any accumulated tar files there get included.

To investigate, run these commands:

# Check volume-backups staging directory for leftover files
du -sh /etc/dokploy/volume-backups/
ls -lh /etc/dokploy/volume-backups/

# See which directories under /etc/dokploy are consuming space
du -sh /etc/dokploy/*

If /etc/dokploy/volume-backups/ shows large tar files, you can safely remove them (they should have been cleaned up after S3 upload):

rm /etc/dokploy/volume-backups/*/*.tar

Other possible culprits include /etc/dokploy/logs/, /etc/dokploy/applications/, or /etc/dokploy/compose/ directories growing unexpectedly.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

---

Docs are dead. Just use Dosu.

[ryzanbui02]

It turned out the old backup files were not removed after S3 upload. I got to use this command to remove all the .tar files in the dokploy volume backup folder:

find /etc/dokploy/volume-backups -type f -name "*.tar" -delete

I'm not sure whether this issue is detected.