Stuck with the error, DirectAdmin: User too large, delete on background? We can help you.

If the sum of the disk usage of any user in DirectAdmin exceeds a certain threshold, the account will eventually delete by a background process.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several DirectAdmin queries.

Today, let us see how to resolve this error.

DirectAdmin: User too large, delete on background

Moving ahead, let us see an effective method to solve this error.

While we delete the excessively large accounts, we may come across time-outs in the browser.

To prevent this, DirectAdmin executes the deletion by adding the command to the background’s task queue, instead of performing it in the foreground.

Once DirectAdmin assigns this task to a background process, we will receive the following message:

user too large, delete on background
The process will actually just be the dataskq

We can change the configuration by modifying the value of the “get_background_delete_size” in the directadmin.conf settings file.

In order to do this, we connect to the server via SSH using root access. Then we go to DirectAdmin’s installed directory:

# cd /usr/local/directadmin/conf/

Then we edit the directadmin.conf file in the directory:

# vi directadmin.conf

By default, if the variable “get_background_delete_size” value exists in the directadmin.conf file, it will be 10 GB.

On the other hand, If we cannot find the variable in the file, simply add it in.

We can change the value of 10240 to a value we wish.

For example, to set the get_background_delete_size to 20 gigabytes, we modify the value to:

get_background_delete_size=20480

The 20480 means we’ve set a 20 GB. We can also disable the feature by setting the value to 0.

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Conclusion

In short, this error occurs when the sum of the disk usage of any user exceeds a certain threshold. Today, we saw an effective method our Support Techs employ in order to solve the error.