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RetroISA process continually > 150%


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I noticed that too but it seems to settle down. its at its worst after a restart, settles down and then takes off again. What I don't like is the amount of real memory it is using in Activity Monitor. I'm thinking of removing Retrospect 10 from my machine and going with a different backup strategy for my iMac and MacBook Air.

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We are testing significant performance improvements for Instant Scan on our primary computers, including mine. Please contact Support so that we can better understand your experience and work with you when a pre-release is ready.

 

In the interim, Instant Scan (RetroISA) can be:

- disabled for current MacOS boot session from Terminal: sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.retroisa.plist

- disabled from future MacOS boot session from Terminal: sudo mv /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.retroisa.plist ~

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  • 4 weeks later...

FYI: Also see this thread: http://forums.retros...expensive-docs/ This post by SmokeAndMirrors may be particularly helpful.

 

After recently upgrading to version 10, I noticed the RetroISA background app keeping my server stuck at a painful crawl, using hundreds of MB of RAM and 30-90% CPU constantly. I've got 7 machines that it backs up totaling about 1.5TB of data. Before I turned the scanning off, it was using up over 500MB of Real Memory and edging close to 1GB of virtual after just a half-hour or so of running.

 

I'm really hoping there is going to be an option to simply turn the instant scanning off. I *much* preferred the old scanning process over the background app. It may have been slow, but as my backups run during lower usage periods, it wasn't an issue. The most important point though is that I had control of when the scanning occurred.

 

Edit:

Mac OS X 10.6.8

2x3Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon

2GB RAM

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  • 1 month later...

The pre-release version (10.1.0 (187)) has been stable for me for weeks now. It did seem to fix a number of issues I was having with loosing track of media sets. I will see if it fixed grooming issues shortly-still a bit reluctant on this because of the massive trouble I had with earlier versions.

I see RetroISA using quite a bit of processor time on the engine machine now and again when I check, but it doesn't seem to be excessive nor cause any problems. No clients are complaining either.

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Have you tried the pre-release version yet? http://kb.retrospect...cle/grx-assert/

 

RetroISA is slightly better than before, but only slightly. On my Mac Pro, after 24 hours it spends about 2/3 of the time eating 30-60% of a CPU and 1/3 idled to a bit less than 1%. On my mini, which only has two cores, it is far worse - close to 95% of the time RetroISA is eating 30-70% of a CPU. The short time it is idled, it is still eating 5-10%, sometimes. I can provide "top" samples, but didn't want to paste 1000 lines here. I'll be disabling RetroISA again. How is it possible to eat so much CPU just processing file system events? Time Machine certainly doesn't have this issue.

 

Also not fixed is communication with Windows 6.5.136 clients. It communicates with the client, but doesn't show any disks. This worked with Retrospect 9, but was broken at 10.0 and is still broken with 10.1. 10.0 release notes show this client version as supported. I did call this in to support, but no answers beyond a should shrug.

 

If you disabled RetroISA with "launchctl unload -w ....", you have to re-enable it with "launchctl load -w ..." or the client installer will abort with no intelligible error (install log shows postinstall failed). I disabled it this way because changing the .ini file as documented didn't work.

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I did install RS10.1.0 (187) today and yes, the RetroISA CPU load has dropped from 110% to 75%! :)

Now it's real easy to start/stop the RetroISA engine from within System Preferences!

 

RS10.1.0%28187%29_RetroISA.jpg

Still have to search & rescue a lot of features within RS, but I hope untill 13th of April I'll have enough time to do so!

Keep you updated!

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That stop/start button has been there for a long time. That's not RetroISA, but the main Retrospect engine. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or actually happy about the decrease in CPU usage. A decrease from 110% to 75% is certainly a significant improvement, but it isn't anything to shout about considering the RetroISA daemon runs all the time. A decrease to well under 1% (all the time) would be more what I would expect from a background daemon monitoring fsevents. Do you see Apple using that much to track changes for Time Machine?

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Thanks for your prompt reply!

 

That stop/start button has been there for a long time. That's not RetroISA, but the main Retrospect engine. You're 100% right about that is was there, but for me it was not always working properly, my mistake! ;)

 

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or actually happy about the decrease in CPU usage. A decrease from 110% to 75% is certainly a significant improvement, but it isn't anything to shout about considering the RetroISA daemon runs all the time.

 

Never sarcastic, but always optimistic/realistic whilst confronting problems/issues in my life!! B)

When RS 10.1.0.178 isn't able to connect to the networked mediaset on my Synology DS1812+, why does it start boiling the CPU (I did not buy a multi-core MAC for this) with percentages running high as to 500%? That's the question!

 

RetroEngine_CPU.jpg

 

A decrease to well under 1% (all the time) would be more what I would expect from a background daemon monitoring fsevents. Do you see Apple using that much to track changes for Time Machine?

 

For me it's not a battle between two brands, it's just simply living up to the expectations based on the claims advertised!

 

NUFF SAID!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've just installed Retro 10.1.0 (187) on a trial licence. I got it to install after a couple of attempts (I'm not sure what was going on), and yesterday I did a Recycle Media backup on my system, because I wasn't sure about how ISA would "catch up" with files modified between the previous backup and the installation of ISA.

 

On a couple of occasions when I installed, including the most recent, successful, attempt, Retrospect didn't "unpack" the documentation and other goodies out of Retrospect.app into the enclosing folder as it should normally do.

 

The first backup was done yesterday without any problems, and without ISA over-consuming resources, but since I started my MacBook Pro this morning, the RetroISA process on the laptop (configured as the Retrospect server) has been consuming 195% CPU time (on a dual core Intel Core 2 Duo).

 

Because I do backups to optical media, I normally only run the Retro engine when I am doing a backup, so it doesn't start automatically at startup, and I close it down when I've finished doing the backups, so that other applications can use the DVD reader.

 

Running OS X 10.8.3.

 

Still glad that I haven't paid any money for Retro 10.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

@JamesBrown: Please contact our support team about your experience with Instant Scan. It should not be taking up that amount of RAM.

 

@bleary: Sorry for such a long delay. If you're still having issues with the Retrospect engine's CPU usage, please contact our support team, and it would be fantastic if you could include an Activity Monitor sample of the RetroEngine process when it's in that state.

 

Support: http://retrospect.com/support/contact

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