[Box Backup] BadBackupStoreFile

Johann Glaser boxbackup@fluffy.co.uk
Sat, 01 Sep 2007 01:21:14 +0200


Hi!

> It prints the banner in the MIDDLE of your bbackupquery session, AFTER you 
> run the compare command? And then hangs? And the server is hung as well?
> That's pretty messed up! I can't even see how the code could do that.

Oh, excuse me, I forgot to say that I started a second instance of
bbackupquery in another terminal window while the one with the "compare"
was still running.

> What platform are the server and client, what version of GCC do you use, 
> where did you get the packages (or did you build them yourself) and do you 
> have any reason to suspect hardward problems such as bad RAM on either 
> server or client?

We have a Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (Etch) and use the unofficial Debian
packages provided at http://debian.myreseau.org/dists/. The hardware
didn't show any problems. The backup server is the same machine as the
backup client. The backup store is an NFS mounted Iomega StorCenter 150d
2TB (internally using RAID5, so it provides 1.5TB).

I think there are two problems which come together:
 1) large files (several GB) and a large total volume to backup (~45GB)
 2) slow backup storage mounted via NFS (Iomega StorCenter 150d 2TB)
The backup usually starts at 3:00 and finishes between 10:00 and 12:00,
so it runs 7-9 hours for approx. 45GB.

BTW: We also use SEP Sesam to do a remote backup to a tape drive which
seems to be quite a lot faster. Ok, it has an internal database for
metadata and direct SCSI connection to the tape drive with high data
rate. I'll check the log files on monday and send you the results.

> > PID 28114 was still running with nearly 100% CPU when already at the 
> > bbackupquery prompt. Typing "ls" just hang. I had to kill it, just 
> > restarting the boxbackup-server didn't stop this task.
> 
> Could you possibly attach a debugger to the hung bbstored process and get 
> a backtrace for me? ("bt" command in gdb).

Ok, I'll do this on monday too, when I'm back at the office.

Bye
  Hansi