# Issues updating Ghost due to insufficient space

**URL:** <https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627>\
**Category:** Installation\
**Created:** [August 20, 2020, 5:19pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627 "2020-08-20T17:19:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 5:19pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/1 "2020-08-20T17:19:10Z")

</div>

I’ve tried to update Ghost from 3.29.1 to 3.30 and above in the past days and I ran into an issue with the server running out of space and the Ghost updates failing to restart the instance.

I’ve tried to rollback to previous versions and the process failed. Tried to force updates and the process succeeds, but the instance is still not starting. If I restart the server, the instance shows as running, but trying to reach the site in the browser gives 502 gateway error.

In the logs:

```
Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v18.04.5 LTS
    Node Version: v10.22.0
    Ghost Version: 3.30.1
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.14.1
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost update'
Message: Could not communicate with Ghost
Suggestion: journalctl -u ghost_learn-t4ngo-io -n 50
Stack: Error: Could not communicate with Ghost
    at Server.server.close (/usr/lib/node_modules/ghost-cli/lib/utils/port-polling.js:56:20)
    at Object.onceWrapper (events.js:286:20)
    at Server.emit (events.js:198:13)
    at emitCloseNT (net.js:1619:8)
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:63:19)

```

Is there a way to rollback to 2-3 previous versions to get back to the 3.29.1 version which was working? I’m worried that there are either file or database corruptions that happened because of the insufficient disk space.

Sample rollback error:

```
Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v18.04.5 LTS
    Node Version: v10.22.0
    Ghost Version: 3.30.0
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.14.1
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost update --rollback'
Message: The database migration in Ghost encountered an error.
Help: https://ghost.org/faq/upgrade-to-ghost-2-0/#what-to-do-when-an-upgrade-fails
Suggestion: ghost update --rollback
--------------- stderr ---------------
[2020-08-19 15:15:06] ERROR Cannot find module './_baseGetTag'

```

Note: maybe ghost update should also check for available space (as it checks for available memory) as an empty Ghost site (i.e. a standard installation with only the demo content) can occupy 2GB of disk space with 5 of its rollback versions…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![inoryum](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/inoryum/32/11866_2.png) [@inoryum](https://forum.ghost.org/u/inoryum)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/2 "2020-08-20T19:43:35Z")

</div>

Hi @dsecareanu

If your server have insufficient space then you should free up some space.

to check the available free space

```auto
df -h 

```

to freeup some spaces then run the following command

```auto
sudo apt autoremove 

sudo apt clean 

```

Above command will free up some unused packages, images & apt caches

After running the commands check recheck the free spaces

```auto
df -h

```

if you see there is enough spaces then you can run the ghost commands or start the ghost

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 8:06pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/3 "2020-08-20T20:06:18Z")

</div>

Yes, I did all that, cleaned up the server, removed older Ghost versions and so on. Even with almost 6gb free space, ghost still fails to start, even though upgrades work and ghost doctor says there’s nothing wrong…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![inoryum](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/inoryum/32/11866_2.png) [@inoryum](https://forum.ghost.org/u/inoryum)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 8:08pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/4 "2020-08-20T20:08:54Z")

</div>

Can you run `ghost ls` & check if ghost services are running or not?  
& if service is not running then start ghost `ghost start` & if running & on browser is still giving error bad gateway then its something related webserver

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 8:31pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/5 "2020-08-20T20:31:12Z")

</div>

I’ve mentioned in the initial post that the sites are not running (restarting) and even if I reboot the server, while they show as running, they’re not actually running (give the gatewy 502 error). The only site running is the one I’ve left not upgraded, which is version 3.29.1 (so is not a web server problem, but a Ghost site problem).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![inoryum](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/inoryum/32/11866_2.png) [@inoryum](https://forum.ghost.org/u/inoryum)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 8:40pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/6 "2020-08-20T20:40:25Z")

</div>

I just updated my dev instance to 3.30.1 without any issue…  
If you like i can take a look to your issue via teamviewer or similar. If so then you can DM me your teamviewer ID Password. I will be here for next 2 hours

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 11:31am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/7 "2020-08-21T11:31:34Z")

</div>

Updates are not generating errors, but probably due to some data corruption (that lack of server space) the ghost instance is not starting anymore. I just updated to 3.30.2 now:

```
ghost update
+ sudo systemctl is-active ghost_antreprenor-digital
✔ Checking system Node.js version
✔ Ensuring user is not logged in as ghost user
✔ Checking if logged in user is directory owner
✔ Checking current folder permissions
✔ Checking folder permissions
✔ Checking file permissions
✔ Checking content folder ownership
✔ Checking memory availability
✔ Checking for available migrations
✔ Checking for latest Ghost version
✔ Downloading and updating Ghost to v3.30.2
✔ Linking latest Ghost and recording versions
ℹ Removing old Ghost versions [skipped]

```

But the instance is stopped and when I try to restart it:

```
ghost restart
+ sudo systemctl is-active ghost_antreprenor-digital
Ghost instance is not running! Starting...
+ sudo systemctl start ghost_antreprenor-digital
+ sudo systemctl stop ghost_antreprenor-digital
✖ Starting Ghost
A GhostError occurred.

Message: Could not communicate with Ghost
Suggestion: journalctl -u ghost_antreprenor-digital -n 50

Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v18.04.5 LTS
    Node Version: v10.22.0
    Ghost Version: 3.30.2
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.14.1
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost restart'

Additional log info available in: /home/ubuntu/.ghost/logs/ghost-cli-debug-2020-08-21T11_27_29_203Z.log

Try running ghost doctor to check your system for known issues.

```

Even though now there is free space on the server (5gb) and ghost doctors shows everything to be fine.

On another site update:

`? Unable to upgrade Ghost from v3.30.1 to v3.30.2. Would you like to revert back to v3.30.1? No`

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![inoryum](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/inoryum/32/11866_2.png) [@inoryum](https://forum.ghost.org/u/inoryum)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 11:42am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/8 "2020-08-21T11:42:36Z")

</div>

> [@dsecareanu](#):
>
> `Could not communicate with Ghost`

I did some research on your error log & found out that some people got it fixed by upgrading node version

Here are the references check if its matched to your issue

> <https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-CLI/issues/1028>
>
> Debug Information:
> OS: Ubuntu, v16.04
> Node Version: v10.17.0
> Ghos…t-CLI Version: 1.12.0
> Environment: production
> Command: 'ghost install --no-stack'
> Message: Could not communicate with Ghost
> Suggestion: journalctl -u ghost\_localhost -n 50
> Stack: Error: Could not communicate with Ghost
> at Server.server.close (/usr/lib/node\_modules/ghost-cli/lib/utils/port-polling.js:56:20)
> at Object.onceWrapper (events.js:286:20)
> at Server.emit (events.js:198:13)
> at emitCloseNT (net.js:1619:8)
> at process.\_tickCallback (internal/process/next\_tick.js:63:19)

> [@Getting error when trying to upgrade to ghost 3.x](https://forum.ghost.org/t/getting-error-when-trying-to-upgrade-to-ghost-3-x/13636/3):
>
> Hey - yeah that thread was helpful. To summarize, for anyone else running into this too, these are the steps I followed which did the trick for me: check node -v which gave v12.16.2 and nodejs -v which gave v8.16.2 (the nodejs version \< 10 is the source of the problem AFAIK) I removed this version of nodejs using sudo apt-get remove nodejs and then installed nodejs v12.x (13.x seems to be latest but I think ghost doesn’t support nodejs v13 yet) from nodesource: [distributions/README.md at maste…](https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/blob/master/README.md)

> [@Ghost start results in could not communicate with ghost error](https://forum.ghost.org/t/ghost-start-results-in-could-not-communicate-with-ghost-error/10180/6):
>
> @jacob Have you found a solution to this issue? I just upgraded to 3.15.3 and I’m getting the same thing. Debug Information: OS: Ubuntu, v18.04.4 LTS Node Version: v10.16.3 Ghost Version: 3.15.3 Ghost-CLI Version: 1.13.1 Environment: production Command: ‘ghost restart’ Message: Could not communicate with Ghost Suggestion: journalctl -u ghost\_notunhealthy-com -n 50 Stack: Error: Could not communicate with Ghost at Server.server.close (/usr/local/lib/node\_modules/ghost-cli/lib/utils/po…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 12:15pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/9 "2020-08-21T12:15:11Z")

</div>

I tried that as well, upgraded nodejs from 10.x to 12.x and still the issue persists. I am thinking of migrating the sites to a new server (upgrade ubuntu 18 to 20 in the process) but unsure if the data corruption at db level will allow me to do this or not. Some of the sites are not important as I can just recreate those (demo sites), but I have a couple that have content that I don’t want to lose.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![inoryum](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/inoryum/32/11866_2.png) [@inoryum](https://forum.ghost.org/u/inoryum)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 12:18pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/10 "2020-08-21T12:18:49Z")

</div>

In that case you can try manually export the db from current instance & import to new one.  
see if that works on new one…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vikaspotluri123](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/vikaspotluri123/32/24_2.png) [@vikaspotluri123](https://forum.ghost.org/u/vikaspotluri123)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 2:52pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/11 "2020-08-21T14:52:42Z")

</div>

@dsecareanu this is definitely something we’re looking to improve in the CLI. Can you share the ghost logs (`ghost log` / `ghost log -e`), and ` /home/ubuntu/.ghost/logs/ghost-cli-debug-2020-08-21T11_27_29_203Z.log` for more context? Thanks!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 3:10pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/12 "2020-08-21T15:10:14Z")

</div>

Yes, but I would like to send more logs (from the initial failed attempts as well), can I send them at [support@ghost.org](mailto:support@ghost.org)?

```
Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v18.04.5 LTS
    Node Version: v10.22.0
    Ghost Version: 3.30.2
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.14.1
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost restart'
Message: Could not communicate with Ghost
Suggestion: journalctl -u ghost_antreprenor-digital -n 50
Stack: Error: Could not communicate with Ghost
    at Server.server.close (/usr/lib/node_modules/ghost-cli/lib/utils/port-polling.js:56:20)
    at Object.onceWrapper (events.js:286:20)
    at Server.emit (events.js:198:13)
    at emitCloseNT (net.js:1619:8)
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:63:19)

```

ghost log -e:

```
An error occurred.
Message: 'Cannot read property 'join' of undefined'

Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v18.04.5 LTS
    Node Version: v12.18.3
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.14.1
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost log -e'

Additional log info available in: /home/ubuntu/.ghost/logs/ghost-cli-debug-2020-08-21T15_14_08_343Z.log

Try running ghost doctor to check your system for known issues.

You can always refer to https://ghost.org/docs/api/ghost-cli/ for troubleshooting.

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vikaspotluri123](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/vikaspotluri123/32/24_2.png) [@vikaspotluri123](https://forum.ghost.org/u/vikaspotluri123)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 3:24pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/13 "2020-08-21T15:24:52Z")

</div>

I’m not part of the Ghost Foundation, so that’s out of my purview 🙂 I can definitely work with you to improve the messaging / debug info provided by the CLI, but broken rollback migrations are not something I can do much about

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 3:44pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/14 "2020-08-21T15:44:20Z")

</div>

Okies, I’ve sent the logs there as well, just in case. 🙂

Sure, if you want we can connect and go through the cli together a bit (me from a user’s perspective) as I think that there are some potential improvements:

- available space on disk check (to avoid this kind of issue I ran into and data corruption in general)
- rollback option to choose the version (not sure why 5 versions are kept and if you can actually rollback to an older version, i.e. -2-5 rather than just 1 version backwards
- maybe even go towards a ghost backup option (as it should be easy to archive local folder and dump the sql database to provide a backup functionality)
- unsure if this qualifies, but I’ve been searching on google to find an ansible driven way to update ghost instances (similar with updating entire servers) and I could only find a stretched command like ansible hostname -m shell -a “cd /var/www/domain.com/ && ghost update”, which works for individual sites, but doesn’t work for multiple sites like a bash script of this sort: for d in /var/www/\*/ ; do (cd “$d” && ghost update); done
- probably there are other improvements that can be done outside of the ones listed above 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![acburdine](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/acburdine/32/4825_2.png) [@acburdine](https://forum.ghost.org/u/acburdine)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 6:59pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/15 "2020-08-23T18:59:06Z")

</div>

Hey @dsecareanu, those are definitely things we can look into:

> available space on disk check (to avoid this kind of issue I ran into and data corruption in general)

this should be fairly straightforward, I’ll create an issue for this in the Ghost-CLI repository 👍

> rollback option to choose the version (not sure why 5 versions are kept and if you can actually rollback to an older version, i.e. -2-5 rather than just 1 version backwards

This change is already in the main repo branch (see [commit](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-CLI/commit/badb662c462084d2b2f8cd9b6e9f566c09d2e8f2)), just hasn’t been released in a version yet.

> maybe even go towards a ghost backup option (as it should be easy to archive local folder and dump the sql database to provide a backup functionality)

We’ve got an early [issue](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-CLI/issues/468) tracking this in the repository - need to figure out the best way to design the command before we get it implemented.

> unsure if this qualifies, but I’ve been searching on google to find an ansible driven way to update ghost instances (similar with updating entire servers) and I could only find a stretched command like ansible hostname -m shell -a “cd /var/www/domain.com/ && ghost update”, which works for individual sites, but doesn’t work for multiple sites like a bash script of this sort: for d in /var/www/\*/ ; do (cd “$d” && ghost update); done

maybe we could look into adding some sort of `ghost update --all`? which would go through all ghost instances on the system and update them. Honestly not _super_ familiar with Ansible so I’m not 100% sure what would make that process easier.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2020, 11:29am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/16 "2020-09-16T11:29:59Z")

</div>

Question: what would be a good way to recover sites that do not start anymore? This means I cannot export the content json file anymore, but I have access to content folder and the database. Thanks!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2020, 12:51pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/17 "2020-09-16T12:51:15Z")

</div>

An update: I’ve tried to update one blog that wasn’t updated/broken and even though there was enough space on the server, the update (from 3.29.1 to 3.33.0) failed with the same issue of being unable to restart ghost.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/18 "2020-09-19T14:07:15Z")

</div>

Anyone has any ideas how to recover these ghost sites? Update or rollbacks do not work, ghost doesn’t restart… Error is:

```
Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v20.04.1 LTS
    Node Version: v12.18.4
    Ghost Version: 3.33.0
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.14.1
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost restart'
Message: Could not communicate with Ghost
Suggestion: journalctl -u ghost_codruvrabie-eu -n 50
Stack: Error: Could not communicate with Ghost
    at Server.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/node_modules/ghost-cli/lib/utils/port-polling.js:56:20)
    at Object.onceWrapper (events.js:421:28)
    at Server.emit (events.js:315:20)
    at emitCloseNT (net.js:1654:8)
    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:83:21)

```

As it appears to be an issue with the database, how can I export from sql to json to be able to reimport the content? Found a bunch of .json files in content/data, can I use these ones for a content restore?

Thanks.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dsecareanu](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/dsecareanu/32/413_2.png) [@dsecareanu](https://forum.ghost.org/u/dsecareanu)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2020, 2:49pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/19 "2020-09-19T14:49:56Z")

</div>

Ok, I think I found my answer trying different things:

- I’ve reinstalled a new ghost site on a new server
- I’ve moved the content folder (most of it, the important parts, i.e. images, settings, themes)
- I’ve backed up the newly installed ghost site database and then dropped all tables
- I’ve done a database restore from the old site (which I wasn’t sure would work, but it seems it does)
- I’ve restarted ghost

It seems there was no data corruption at database level, but the issues with ghost not restarting were somewhere else (maybe in some files rather, though a ghost update --force should have solved that somehow).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![afragos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@afragos](https://forum.ghost.org/u/afragos)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2020, 10:34am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/issues-updating-ghost-due-to-insufficient-space/16627/20 "2020-09-27T10:34:09Z")

</div>

Above command will free up some unused packages, images & apt caches

After running the commands check recheck the free spaces