backup mail report says INTERRUPTED but it's not ?

[Pilow]

i'm not foreseeing something good happening on this one
still growing

[MajorP93]

Xen Orchestra Backup RAM consumption still does not look o.k. in my case... Even after downgrading Node JS to 20 and all other dependencies to their respective versions as used in XOA.

I am currently running XO commit "91c5d98489b5981917ca0aabc28ac37acd448396" / feat: release 6.1.1 so I expected RAM fixes as mentioned by @florent to be there.

Despite all of that backup jobs got terminated again (Xen Orchestra Backup status "interrupted").

Xen Orchestra log shows:

<--- JS stacktrace --->

FATAL ERROR: Reached heap limit Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory
----- Native stack trace -----

 1: 0xb76db1 node::OOMErrorHandler(char const*, v8::OOMDetails const&) [/usr/local/bin/node]
 2: 0xee62f0 v8::Utils::ReportOOMFailure(v8::internal::Isolate*, char const*, v8::OOMDetails const&) [/usr/local/bin/node]
 3: 0xee65d7 v8::internal::V8::FatalProcessOutOfMemory(v8::internal::Isolate*, char const*, v8::OOMDetails const&) [/usr/local/bin/node]
 4: 0x10f82d5  [/usr/local/bin/node]
 5: 0x1110158 v8::internal::Heap::CollectGarbage(v8::internal::AllocationSpace, v8::internal::GarbageCollectionReason, v8::GCCallbackFlags) [/usr/local/bin/node]
 6: 0x10e6271 v8::internal::HeapAllocator::AllocateRawWithLightRetrySlowPath(int, v8::internal::AllocationType, v8::internal::AllocationOrigin, v8::internal::AllocationAlignment) [/usr/local/bin/node]
 7: 0x10e7405 v8::internal::HeapAllocator::AllocateRawWithRetryOrFailSlowPath(int, v8::internal::AllocationType, v8::internal::AllocationOrigin, v8::internal::AllocationAlignment) [/usr/local/bin/node]
 8: 0x10c3b26 v8::internal::Factory::AllocateRaw(int, v8::internal::AllocationType, v8::internal::AllocationAlignment) [/usr/local/bin/node]
 9: 0x10b529c v8::internal::FactoryBase<v8::internal::Factory>::AllocateRawArray(int, v8::internal::AllocationType) [/usr/local/bin/node]
10: 0x10b5404 v8::internal::FactoryBase<v8::internal::Factory>::NewFixedArrayWithFiller(v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::Map>, int, v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::Oddball>, v8::internal::AllocationType) [/usr/local/bin/node]
11: 0x10d1e45 v8::internal::Factory::NewJSArrayStorage(v8::internal::ElementsKind, int, v8::internal::ArrayStorageAllocationMode) [/usr/local/bin/node]
12: 0x10d1f4e v8::internal::Factory::NewJSArray(v8::internal::ElementsKind, int, int, v8::internal::ArrayStorageAllocationMode, v8::internal::AllocationType) [/usr/local/bin/node]
13: 0x12214a9 v8::internal::JsonParser<unsigned char>::BuildJsonArray(v8::internal::JsonParser<unsigned char>::JsonContinuation const&, v8::base::SmallVector<v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::Object>, 16ul, std::allocator<v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::Object> > > const&) [/usr/local/bin/node]
14: 0x122c35e  [/usr/local/bin/node]
15: 0x122e999 v8::internal::JsonParser<unsigned char>::ParseJson(v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::Object>) [/usr/local/bin/node]
16: 0xf78171 v8::internal::Builtin_JsonParse(int, unsigned long*, v8::internal::Isolate*) [/usr/local/bin/node]
17: 0x1959df6  [/usr/local/bin/node]
{"level":"error","message":"Forever detected script was killed by signal: SIGABRT"}
{"level":"error","message":"Script restart attempt #1"}
Warning: Ignoring extra certs from `/host-ca.pem`, load failed: error:80000002:system library::No such file or directory
2026-02-10T15:49:15.008Z xo:main WARN could not detect current commit {
  error: Error: spawn git ENOENT
      at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:285:19)
      at onErrorNT (node:internal/child_process:483:16)
      at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:82:21) {
    errno: -2,
    code: 'ENOENT',
    syscall: 'spawn git',
    path: 'git',
    spawnargs: [ 'rev-parse', '--short', 'HEAD' ],
    cmd: 'git rev-parse --short HEAD'
  }
}
2026-02-10T15:49:15.012Z xo:main INFO Starting xo-server v5.196.2 (https://github.com/vatesfr/xen-orchestra/commit/91c5d9848)
2026-02-10T15:49:15.032Z xo:main INFO Configuration loaded.
2026-02-10T15:49:15.036Z xo:main INFO Web server listening on http://[::]:80
2026-02-10T15:49:15.043Z xo:main INFO Web server listening on https://[::]:443
2026-02-10T15:49:15.455Z xo:mixins:hooks WARN start failure {
  error: Error: spawn xenstore-read ENOENT
      at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:285:19)
      at onErrorNT (node:internal/child_process:483:16)
      at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:82:21) {
    errno: -2,
    code: 'ENOENT',
    syscall: 'spawn xenstore-read',
    path: 'xenstore-read',
    spawnargs: [ 'vm' ],
    cmd: 'xenstore-read vm'
  }
}

XO virtual machine RAM usage climbed again, even after updating to "feat: release 6.1.1" commit. VM has 8GB RAM, they do not fully get exhausted.
Seems to be related to Node heap size.

You can see the exact moment when the backup jobs went into status "interrupted" (RAM usage dropped).

I am trying to fix these backup issues and am really running out of ideas...
My backup jobs had been running stable in the past.

Something about RAM usage seem to have changed around the release of XO6 as previously mentioned in this thread.

0 mpiton committed to vatesfr/xen-orchestra

feat: release 6.1.1 (#9470)

[Pilow]

@MajorP93 you say to have 8GB Ram on XO, but it OOMkills at 5Gb Used RAM.

did you do those additionnal steps in your XO Config ?

You can increase the memory allocated to the XOA VM (from 2GB to 4GB or 8GB).
Note that simply increasing the RAM for the VM is not enough.
You must also edit the service file (/etc/systemd/system/xo-server.service) 
to increase the memory allocated to the xo-server process itself.

You should leave ~512MB for the debian OS itself. Meaning if your VM has 4096MB total RAM, you should use 3584 for the memory value below.

- ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/xo-server
+ ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node --max-old-space-size=3584 /usr/local/bin/xo-server
The last step is to refresh and restart the service:

$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl restart xo-server

[MajorP93]

@Pilow said in backup mail report says INTERRUPTED but it's not ?:

@MajorP93 you say to have 8GB Ram on XO, but it OOMkills at 5Gb Used RAM.

did you do those additionnal steps in your XO Config ?

You can increase the memory allocated to the XOA VM (from 2GB to 4GB or 8GB).
Note that simply increasing the RAM for the VM is not enough.
You must also edit the service file (/etc/systemd/system/xo-server.service) 
to increase the memory allocated to the xo-server process itself.

You should leave ~512MB for the debian OS itself. Meaning if your VM has 4096MB total RAM, you should use 3584 for the memory value below.

- ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/xo-server
+ ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node --max-old-space-size=3584 /usr/local/bin/xo-server
The last step is to refresh and restart the service:

$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl restart xo-server

Interesting!
I did not know that it is recommended to set "--max-old-space-size=" as a startup parameter for Node JS with the result of (total system ram - 512MB).
I added that, restarted XO and my backup job.

I will test if that gives my backup jobs more stability.
Thank you very much for taking the time and recommending the parameter.

[olivierlambert]

can you remind me the Node version you have, that is exhibiting the problem?

[MajorP93]

@olivierlambert Right now I am using Node JS version 20 as I saw that XOA uses that version aswell. I thought it might be best to use all dependencies at the versions that XOA uses.

I was having the issue with backup job "interrupted" status on Node JS 24 aswell as documented in this thread.

Actually since I downgraded to Node 20 total system RAM usage seems to have decreased by a fair bit which can be seen by comparing the 2 screenshots that I posted in this thread. On first screenshot I was using Node 24 und second screenshot Node 20.
Despite that the issue re-occurred after a few days of XO running.

I hope that --max-old-space-size Node parameter as suggested by @pilow solves my issue.
I will report back.

Best regards

[olivierlambert]

Okay weird, so having a very different RAM usage with Node 24 should be checked when we'll update XOA Node version.

[Pilow]

@MajorP93 this was found in the troubleshooting section of the documentation when i tried to optimise my xoa/xoproxies deployments

https://docs.xen-orchestra.com/troubleshooting#memory

[Pilow]

not looking better today. still not crashed.

but before the patches at 48h max, i topped the 8Gb and got the OOM killed process.

[Pilow]

before disruption, I prefer to patch/reboot my XOA
We got to the limit

still some memory leak somewhere guys !

[florent]

@Pilow we are still working on it, but for now we didn't find a solution

[MajorP93]

After implementing the --max-old-space-size Node parameter as recommended by @pilow it took longer time for the VM to hit the issue.
Still: backups went into interrupted status.
Memory leak seems to be still there.
With each subsequent backup run the memory usage rises and rises. After backup run the memory usage does not fully go back to "normal".

After adding the node parameter there was no heap size error on Node anymore since the heap size got increased. The system went into various OOM errors in kernel log (dmesg) despite not all RAM (8GB) being used.

This is what htop looks like with 3 backup jobs running:

[acebmxer]

While working last night i noticed one of my backups/pools did this. Got the email that it was interupted but when i looked the tasks were still running and moving data it untill it porcess all vms in that backup job.

Edit - note my backup job was run via proxy on the specific pool/job.

2026-02-19T03_00_00.028Z - backup NG.txt

Edit 2 - homelab same last backup was interupted.

2026-02-19T05_00_00.011Z - backup NG.txt

[MajorP93]

I wonder if this PR https://github.com/vatesfr/xen-orchestra/pull/9506 aims to solve the issue that was discussed in this thread.
To me it looks like it's the case as the issue seems to be related to RAM used by backup jobs not being freed correctly and the PR seems to add some garbage collection to backup jobs.
I hope that it will fix the issue and if needed I can test a branch.

b-Nollet opened this pull request in vatesfr/xen-orchestra

closed Backup tasks gc #9506

[Bastien Nollet]

Hi @MajorP93,

This PR is only about changing the way we delete old logs (linked to a bigger work of making backups use XO tasks instead of their own task system), it won't fix the issue discussed in this topic.

[MajorP93]

Hi @Bastien-Nollet,

oh okay, thanks for clarifying!

[flakpyro]

I have been having the same issue and have been watching it for the last couple weeks. Initially my XOA only had 8GB of ram assigned, i have bumped it up to 16 to try an alleviate the issue. Seems to be some sort of memory leak. This is the official XO Appliance too not XO CE.

I changed the systemd file to make use of the extra memory as per the docs,

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node --max-old-space-size=12288 /usr/local/bin/xo-server

It seems that over time it will just consume all of its memory until it crashes and restarts no matter how much i assign.

[MajorP93]

During the past month my backups failed (status interrupted) 1-2 times per week due to this memory leak.
When increasing heap size (node old space size) it takes longer but the backup fails when RAM usage eventually hits 100%.
I guess I’ll go with @Pilow ‘s workaround for now and create a cronjob for rebooting XO VM right before backups start.

[olivierlambert]

All of you are using a Node 24 LTS version? Do you still have the issue with Node 20 or Node 22?

[MajorP93]

@olivierlambert No.
I reverted to Node 20 as previously mentioned.
I was using Node 24 before but reverted to Node 20 as I hoped it would "fix" the issue.
Using Node 20 it takes longer for these issues to arise but in the end they arise.

3 of the users in this thread that encounter the issue said that they are using XOA.
As XOA also uses Node 20, I think most people that reported this issue actually use Node 20.