[Box Backup] Controlling rate in lazy mode

Ben Summers boxbackup@fluffy.co.uk
Fri, 8 Oct 2004 09:13:48 +0100


On 8 Oct 2004, at 08:40, Adrian Cox wrote:

> I'm using boxbackup on three Debian boxes. I've found that lazy mode is
> really more like hyperactive mode, and the continual churning of the
> disks has a noticeable effect on interactive use of the machine.
>
> I can cure the problem by switching to snapshot mode and running 
> nightly
> snapshots. But I do like the concept of lazy mode, and it would be
> useful to be able to throttle the rate of disk I/O. Any suggestions as
> to how I could do that?

I assume you're running it over a LAN connection, so it can go as fast 
as it wants? I'm surprised that one process can hog your machine so 
much though.

Eventually I plan to add in rate limiting, so you can restrict the 
amount of bandwidth it uses. And on a timed basis, so you can throttle 
it right down during the working day and let it rip during the night.

In the meantime, some ideas.

1) Use your packet filter to rate limit outgoing packets going to port 
2201. (It's a couple of lines of configuration under OpenBSD's pf, I 
assume Linux has a similar facility.)

2) Run bbackupd as a low priority task, with nice/renice or something.

3) Insert a sleep(10) in BackupClientDirectoryRecord::SyncDirectory() 
and recompile.

Hope this helps.

Ben