Rsnapshot memory leak

  • Hey you guys,

    I have some troubles with may backup running with rssnapshot. Hope that this is the right forum, otherwise please feel free to direct me where appropriate.


    I am running OMV 6.5.2.1 using the rssnapshot plugin for daily backups on an external harddrive. The complete files to backup amount to arround 200gb. The backup drive is ntfs formatted. By accident, I became aware of a strange issue going on with my backup. After being started it keeps consuming RAM over a few hours until the system gets unresponsive and crashes. Initially I was not aware of that issue because the crashes seem to happen arround 10.00 am in the morning when I am usually not at home. Hence, I cannot say if this is a recent issue. I can say, however, that the backup worked in the first few weeks after I configured it.


    There is nothing in the logs neither in syslog nor in rssnapshot.log or in kernel.log that would point me to any idea of how to fix it. Hence, I am not posting them here. Syslog only shows memory to match resource limit. Kernel.log shows nothing out of the ordinary and rssnapshot shows successful start but not end of backup. To give you an idea of what I am talking about, please see attached screenshot which shows memory consumption starting at 4.45 with start of rsnapshot. In case of the screen shot I was able to restart the system before it crashed.

    If there is anyone with an idea what is going on or how to fix, any help would be appreciated.

    Best Jonny


    • Official Post

    One problem is going to be that rsnapshot needs to set unix permissions and create hardlinks. ntfs is not going to support all of that and rsnapshot might be consuming memory because of that. You should use a native Linux filesystem.

    omv 7.4.14-1 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.11 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.15 | compose 7.2.16 | k8s 7.3.1-1 | cputemp 7.0.2 | mergerfs 7.0.5 | scripts 7.0.9


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github - changelogs


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • Thanks, for your quick answers, I will give it a try with another format. However what is quite strange ( and does not support this hypothesis): If I run the backup manually, memory is consistent. Anyway, I think I should get rid of ntfs and see how that plays out

    • Official Post

    I will give it a try with another format. However what is quite strange ( and does not support this hypothesis): If I run the backup manually, memory is consistent. Anyway, I think I should get rid of ntfs and see how that plays out

    I have used rsnapshot on a low memory system for years and not seen this. So, that is the only thing I can think might be causing the issue.

    omv 7.4.14-1 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.11 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.15 | compose 7.2.16 | k8s 7.3.1-1 | cputemp 7.0.2 | mergerfs 7.0.5 | scripts 7.0.9


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github - changelogs


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!