[Box Backup] Housekeeping hogging the server

[Ben Summers]

On 25 Oct 2006, at 16:02, Jamie Neil wrote:

> Ben Summers wrote:
>>
>> On 25 Oct 2006, at 13:53, Jamie Neil wrote:
>>
>>> Ben Summers wrote:
>>>> In the meantime, do you really need to use encrypted backups? If  
>>>> you
>>>> control both the server, the client, and they're both on a  
>>>> network you
>>>> manage, wouldn't rsync be better?
>>>
>>> That's the conclusion I'm coming to. The boxbackup system is  
>>> primarily
>>> for offsite client backups, but I was hoping to use the same  
>>> platform
>>> for local servers too.
>>>
>>> At the moment it's a toss up between rsnapshot (rsync based using  
>>> hard
>>> links to save space) and rdiff-backup. I think rdiff-backup has  
>>> the edge
>>> because it can run on the backup server as a non root user.
>>
>> If you did want to use Box Backup, you could tar the directories  
>> up. If
>> they always have the same filename, then it should be nice and  
>> efficient
>> on bandwidth and disc space.
>>
>> However, I don't think the server should be using quite so much CPU.
>> Mostly it'll be waiting for I/O. Could it be another of those lovely
>> Linux and hardware disagreements?
>
> It's possible, but it's running on hardware that we've had no problems
> with in the past and it's actually a Xen guest so it's insulated to  
> from
> the hardware to some degree.

Could this insulation be the problem? It would be interesting to know  
what happens when a disc benchmark program is running, for example  
bonnie, on the Xen guest and the 'raw' machine.

>
> Now that I've removed the mail server account the CPU is right back  
> down
> to idle.

Has this vastly reduced the number of files on the server?

Ben