Backups incomplete

Juc

New Member
Jun 1, 2025
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Hi!

I'm backing up my VMs and LXCs via PBS and just wanted to see how restoration of individual files works. However, I saw that many folders that contain files in my running LXC are empty in my backup.
Is it normal that all these folders are empty?

Bildschirmfoto 2025-07-02 um 14.26.10.png


Thanks!
 
Is it normal that all these folders are empty?
This depends: for most of the ones you showed above there will be no data backed up, as they are populated at runtime and located on a different filesystem, e.g. dev, proc, sys and tmp. Others might be simply empty or you have a bind mount to them, not being part of the backup (e.g. do you expect to have contents in /home?). Also, mount points might be flagged to be excluded from the backup. Further, you might have explicitly excluded some folder from the backup, by setting pxar exclude files.

Please share the full backup task log for the backup job which created this backup snapshot and post the container configuration obtained via pct config <VMID>.
 
This depends: for most of the ones you showed above there will be no data backed up, as they are populated at runtime and located on a different filesystem, e.g. dev, proc, sys and tmp. Others might be simply empty or you have a bind mount to them, not being part of the backup (e.g. do you expect to have contents in /home?). Also, mount points might be flagged to be excluded from the backup. Further, you might have explicitly excluded some folder from the backup, by setting pxar exclude files.

Please share the full backup task log for the backup job which created this backup snapshot and post the container configuration obtained via pct config <VMID>.
Thank your for your help.

Here is the config:
Code:
arch: amd64
cores: 1
features: nesting=1
hostname: nextcloud
memory: 4096
mp0: /mnt/datapool/nextcloud_data,mp=/mnt/shared
net0: name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1,gw=192.168.1.1,hwaddr=BC:24:11:78:76:5E,ip=192.168.1.102/24,ip6=dhcp,type=veth
onboot: 1
ostype: ubuntu
rootfs: local-lvm:vm-102-disk-0,size=8G
swap: 4096
unprivileged: 1

And here is the log for the backup job.

Do I understand correctly that this mount mp0: /mnt/datapool/nextcloud_data,mp=/mnt/shared will not be included in any backup?
 
Do I understand correctly that this mount mp0: /mnt/datapool/nextcloud_data,mp=/mnt/shared will not be included in any backup?
Yes, see the excerpt from the task log:

INFO: including mount point rootfs ('/') in backup
INFO: excluding bind mount point mp0 ('/mnt/nextcloud_data') from backup (not a volume)
This is a bind mount point, therefore not part of the backup, see https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_bind_mount_points

INFO: creating Proxmox Backup Server archive 'ct/100/2025-07-02T15:20:45Z'
INFO: set max number of entries in memory for file-based backups to 1048576
INFO: run: lxc-usernsexec -m u:0:100000:65536 -m g:0:100000:65536 -- /usr/bin/proxmox-backup-client backup --crypt-mode=none pct.conf:/var/tmp/vzdumptmp167677_100/etc/vzdump/pct.conf root.pxar:/mnt/vzsnap0 --include-dev /mnt/vzsnap0/./ --skip-lost-and-found --exclude=/mnt/datapool/images/103 --exclude=/tmp/?* --exclude=/var/tmp/?* --exclude=/var/run/?*.pid --backup-type ct --backup-id 100 --backup-time 1751469645 --entries-max 1048576 --repository
/mnt/vzsnap0 in above part is basically your container root filesystem, and the excludes tell what is being excluded from the backup. Pretty much standard except from the /mnt/datapool/images/103, which however you explicitly exclude according to the job as you posted in https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/trigger-hook-script-only-once-after-backup.168064/post-781328
 
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it.

May I add one last?
If PBS is running in an LXC in PVE, can it backup itself somehow?
 
If PBS is running in an LXC in PVE, can it backup itself somehow?
It does not make much sense to backup the PBS to itself, after all your main goal is not to perform backups, but to be able to restore these backups. So if your PBS or your PVE host fails, you need means to restore your backups.

The recommended way is to transfer backups to an offsite, remote host by using sync jobs, see https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/managing-remotes.html#managing-remotes-sync.
If that is not an option for you, backing up the PBS via PVE's vzdump to an independent storage might be an option as well.