Automatic backups running every few seconds without cron job

Community Support Backups
1

Hi,

I’m experiencing a strange issue with HestiaCP. Local backups are being created automatically every few seconds, even though I have no cron jobs configured for any user to trigger backups.

This happens between 5:00 and 9:00 AM and affects multiple users. Below is a short snippet of the log (there are hundreds of such entries):

yaml

KopiujEdytuj

20 Jun 2025 07:48:27 Backup created (User: [user1], Archive: 2025-06-20_07-48-13.tar).
20 Jun 2025 07:48:27 Backup created (User: [user1], Archive: 2025-06-20_07-48-12.tar).
20 Jun 2025 07:48:24 Backup created (User: [user1], Archive: 2025-06-20_07-48-07.tar).
...
20 Jun 2025 07:40:45 Backup created (User: [user1], Archive: 2025-06-20_07-40-38.tar).
20 Jun 2025 07:40:42 Backup created (User: [user2], Archive: 2025-06-20_07-40-37.tar).

Users anonymized in this post, but this repeats for several accounts. I’ve double-checked all cron jobs, both system-wide and user-level — none are related to backups.

Any ideas what could cause this behavior or how to debug it?

Thanks in advance!

2 
cat /var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb

cat /usr/local/hestia/data/queue/backup.pipe
3 
MAILTO=""
CONTENT_TYPE="text/plain; charset=utf-8"
*/2 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue restart
10 00 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue daily
15 02 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue disk
10 00 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue traffic
30 03 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue webstats
*/5 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue backup
20 00 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-user-stats
*/5 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-rrd
54 4 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-letsencrypt-ssl
42 6 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-hestia-all
root@mail:/usr/local/hestia/data/users# cat /usr/local/hestia/data/queue/backup.pipe
root@mail:/usr/local/hestia/data/users#

I removed v-backup-users for testing, but it still creates backups every few seconds from 5 AM to 9 AM.

4

*/5 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue backup

I’ve just noticed this… I’ll take a closer look at this command.

5

It looks like the issue is not caused by v-update-sys-queue backup

6

sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue backup checks every minute if backup.pipe contains a job but should never execute any thing if empty

7

Yes, I’ve read that. I’ve completely lost track of where to look for the cause of my issue.

8

Interesting issue…

9

Show the output of these commands (as root):

atq
systemctl list-timers --all --no-pager -l
grep -r backup /etc/cron* /var/spool/cron
10 
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb.vst.back:*/5 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue backup
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb.vst.back:00 22 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-backup-users
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/ravczy:# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/ravczy:# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb:*/5 * * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-update-sys-queue backup
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb:00 23 * * * sudo /usr/local/hestia/bin/v-backup-users

I noticed what seems to be a duplicate entry related to ‘backup users’ in the logs. I’ll extract the full logs from the server and review them in more detail to confirm.

11

Remove that file:

rm -f /var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb.vst.back

Use also this command to edit crontab and save (there is no need to modify anything, just edit and save):

crontab -e -u hestiaweb

You didn’t post the output of the above commands.

1 Like
12

i’ll check this case tomorrow at the morning:) thx…

1 Like
13

It looks like rm -f /var/spool/cron/crontabs/hestiaweb.vst.back helped. Now one backup is performed daily at the scheduled time.

Thank you Sahsanu!

2 Likes