Re: [CentOS] slugishness

2009-07-15 Thread Warren Young
Scott Silva wrote:
 USB I believe is not a DMA based port, so the processor has to do a lot of
 work, especially at higher speeds. Rsync can also be a resource hog, as it
 keeps most of the hash tables in memory it uses to compare files with.

True enough, though I wouldn't say USB is the whole problem here, or 
maybe even the main one.  Disk-to-disk backup amounts to a whole lot of 
I/O, and those pipes need continuous help from the CPU to stay full.

I have a similar system to the OP, except that it uses a hot-swap SATA 
disk instead of USB and rdiff-backup instead of rsync.  Both improve the 
speed over the OP's solution, but even so, top shows the backup process 
regularly grabbing about 50% of one of the cores on a lightning fast 
Core i7 box to keep that pipe to the disk filled.  When the backup is 
running, you easily feel the speed hit when doing other things at the 
same time.
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Re: [CentOS] slugishness

2009-07-14 Thread Scott Silva
on 7-3-2009 5:30 AM Jerry Geis spake the following:
 Hi all,
 
 I have a 3G AM2 quad core CPU... x86_64 centos 5.3
 
 
 When I am doing backing up to my external USB drive
 my system becomes sluggish. Clicking on a thunderbird compose
 takes some time to pop up the window. Typing doesn't keep up etc...
 
 Is there something I can change so this backup doesn't slow my system
 down so much? I don't see HOW it can be taking so much CPU.
 top at times shows 0 idle or 11% idle from a USB backup.
 
 Thanks for any suggestions.
 
 Jerry
USB I believe is not a DMA based port, so the processor has to do a lot of
work, especially at higher speeds. Rsync can also be a resource hog, as it
keeps most of the hash tables in memory it uses to compare files with.



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Re: [CentOS] slugishness

2009-07-03 Thread Didi
On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Jerry Geisge...@pagestation.com wrote:
 Hi all,

 I have a 3G AM2 quad core CPU... x86_64 centos 5.3


 When I am doing backing up to my external USB drive
 my system becomes sluggish. Clicking on a thunderbird compose
 takes some time to pop up the window. Typeing doesnt keep up etc...

 Is there something I can change so this backup doesnt slow my system
 down so much? I dont see HOW it can be taking so much CPU.
 top at times shows 0 idle or 11% idle from a USB backup.

 Thanks for any suggestions.

$ man renice

Didi

 Jerry
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Re: [CentOS] slugishness

2009-07-03 Thread Rajagopal Swaminathan
Greetings,

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 6:00 PM, Jerry Geisge...@pagestation.com wrote:
 Hi all,

 When I am doing backing up to my external USB drive
 my system becomes sluggish. Clicking on a thunderbird compose
 takes some time to pop up the window. Typeing doesnt keep up etc...

 Is there something I can change so this backup doesnt slow my system
 down so much? I dont see HOW it can be taking so much CPU.
 top at times shows 0 idle or 11% idle from a USB backup.


also try out these

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Disk_Optimization

Regards

Rajagopal
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Re: [CentOS] slugishness

2009-07-03 Thread Robert Heller
At Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:30:43 -0400 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org 
wrote:

 
 Hi all,
 
 I have a 3G AM2 quad core CPU... x86_64 centos 5.3
 
 
 When I am doing backing up to my external USB drive
 my system becomes sluggish. Clicking on a thunderbird compose
 takes some time to pop up the window. Typeing doesnt keep up etc...
 
 Is there something I can change so this backup doesnt slow my system
 down so much? I dont see HOW it can be taking so much CPU.
 top at times shows 0 idle or 11% idle from a USB backup.
 
 Thanks for any suggestions.

Define 'backing up to my external USB drive':

Are you:

1) Using dump, tar, cpio, or cp?
2) Are you compressing the backup? With gzip or bzip?
3) Are you using zip?

If you are using bzip, bzip is a cpu hog.

How much memory do you have?

What kind of disks do you have? IDE? SATA?  If SATA, is the controller
in AHCI mode or IDE mode?

 
 Jerry
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Re: [CentOS] slugishness

2009-07-03 Thread Jerry Geis

 / 
 // Hi all,
 // 
 // I have a 3G AM2 quad core CPU... x86_64 centos 5.3
 // 
 // 
 // When I am doing backing up to my external USB drive
 // my system becomes sluggish. Clicking on a thunderbird compose
 // takes some time to pop up the window. Typeing doesnt keep up etc...
 // 
 // Is there something I can change so this backup doesnt slow my system
 // down so much? I dont see HOW it can be taking so much CPU.
 // top at times shows 0 idle or 11% idle from a USB backup.
 // 
 // Thanks for any suggestions.
 /
 Define 'backing up to my external USB drive':

 Are you:

   1) Using dump, tar, cpio, or cp?
   2) Are you compressing the backup? With gzip or bzip?
   3) Are you using zip?

 If you are using bzip, bzip is a cpu hog.

 How much memory do you have?

 What kind of disks do you have? IDE? SATA?  If SATA, is the controller
 in AHCI mode or IDE mode?
   
I have four gig RAM, I am just doing a rsync -a /home 
/mnt/external_usb/backup.XX.YY.2009
My server has RAID-1 SATA 1 TB drives (two of course for raid) and I am 
doing a straight
rsync to an external 1TB usb connected disk. Not doing any compression 
at this time.

The renice did help some mentioned earlier...

Jerry
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