Re: xbru freeze up (was Re: New User Question...)

From EST Technical Support
List bru
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* List: bru@canopus.estinc.com

* From: EST Technical Support

There seems to be a lot of compression issues of late. Let's see if the following sheds any light on the subject....

BRU (and XBRU) will attempt to compress all files not excluded by a "zs" entry in your bruxpat file when software compression is on (BRU: -Z; XBRU: Options->Backup, Use Software Compression).

The problem is that all systems contain files that shouldn't be compressed. By default, your bruxpat ships with:

zs *.gz
zs *.tgz
zs *.[Zz]

If you have other files which do not compress well (gif, jpeg....), you should include these at the bottom of your /etc/bruxpat file as "zs" entries. Otherwise, BRU will attempt to compress the file and, after the attempt is complete, realize it didn't compress
successfully. At that point, BRU will ignore the compressed file and backup the original file to tape. Needless to say, this is a waste of time!!! Where a system has many (many) such files or very (very) large such files, your effective backup time will be destroyed.

Your list may vary but here are a few ideas (don't forget to add those Window archive file extensions such as ZIP, if applicable):

zs *.gif
zs *.GIF
zs *.tif
zs *.TIF
zs *.tiff
zs *.TIFF
zs *.jpg
zs *.jpeg
zs *.JPG
zs *.JPEG
zs *.gz
zs *.tgz
zs *.Z
zs *.z
zs *.ra
zs *.rm
zs *.ram
zs *.zip
zs *.ZIP
zs *.lha
zs *.LHA
zs *.sqx
zs *.sit

We hope this helps speed the backup process along for everybody :-)

The BRU Cru

bru@estinc.com wrote:

> * List: bru@canopus.estinc.com
>
> * From: Peter Fraterdeus
>
> Another issue, however.
>
> This happened the last two times I've tried running the program :(
>
> The darn thing just freezes : here's the line from 'ps ax'
>
> 1909 p1 D 10:41 bru -cABvvvv -R -X -G -PfE -L Wizard BU 01-20-1999 -l -f /de
>
> dead in the water.
>
> Can't kill it, have to reboot.
>
> This is not good at all, and is particularly disappointing after making such good time up til this point.
>
> The weird thing is that the 'elapsed time' in xbru just keeps on ticking, but nothing else happens Can't cancel or quit...
>
> Any ideas???
>
> thanks!
>
> PF
>
> >* List: bru@canopus.estinc.com
> >
> >* From: Peter Fraterdeus
> >
> >>>
> >>> * From: Peter Fraterdeus
> >>> I'm also wondering if the fact that I've got thousands of 2 and 3 K gifs and html files is just making a real overhead headache?
> >>
> >>No, this would have caused a problem in the backup to /dev/null as well,
> >>and that ran fast enough. The problem is in talking to the tape drive.
> >>
> >
> >OK, I did discover that trying to COMPRESS thousands of 2-3 K files can seriosly affect the throughput. The brulog disclosed that bru tried to compress them and found the the compressed file was larger than the original, so it wrote the original. This definitely adds up.
> >
> >After turning OFF compression, I set the buffer back to 16K, and I'm now about halfway through a 500+MB backup in less than 30 minutes. I estimate about 133K/sec, which is pretty darn good compared to the 6K/sec I was gettign before!
> >
> >Now, we'll see if it verifies ;-)
> >
> >Thanks for the help!
> >
> >PF

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