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Temporary directory and disk space#

Before the mkectl backup command streams the etcd snapshot to the machine that runs the command, k0s stages the snapshot in a temporary directory on a manager node. By default, this directory is /tmp. The directory must have free space at least equal to the size of the etcd database file, <data-dir>/etcd/member/snap/db.

On hosts where /tmp is a small tmpfs, set the staging directory to a path on a larger filesystem:

  • To change the staging directory for all backups, set spec.backup.tempDir in the MKE 4 configuration file:

    spec:
  backup:
    tempDir: /var/lib/mke/tmp

  • To change the staging directory for a single run, pass the --temp-dir flag. The flag overrides spec.backup.tempDir.

    mkectl backup -f <config_file_path> --temp-dir /var/lib/mke/tmp --passphrase -

The staging directory setting also applies to:

  • The backup that mkectl upgrade takes before it upgrades the cluster
  • The backups that mkectl node add and mkectl node remove take
  • mkectl restore, which unpacks the backup archive in the staging directory

Scheduled backups run on the manager nodes. If spec.backup.tempDir is not set, scheduled backups stage the snapshot in spec.backup.schedule.path, the directory that stores the archive.