michaeln Posted September 28, 2005 Report Share Posted September 28, 2005 Hi Arthur, This issue has primarily been seen with users who are booted off of the RAID volume. Backups to local RAID volumes from systems on non-RAID hard drives shouldn't be seeing UI sluggishness. There will be heavy CPU usage during the matching process depending on the number of files you are backing up and while getting the permissions at the end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aschubow Posted September 28, 2005 Report Share Posted September 28, 2005 No, I don't think so, the hardware is fine. If you re-read my post, you will see that when it works I get 400MB/min in throughput. It gets dog slow when backing up a software RAID--locally. If I moved retrospect and the tape drive to another machine and backed up the same volume over the network, I have no doubts that I would be back up at the speed cap of the tape drive. Unfortunately, that is not an option. Hopefully the fix for Retrospect will come soon. can't come soon enough for me. Quote: Alex, I'm seeing something very different from you. We've got rather modest hardware (single-processor Xserve G5 2.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.2 server) and I'm even seeing over 150 MB per minute backup rate over the network (100 BaseT) of a slow 300 MHz iMac (10.4.2 non-server). For backups local on our server from our RAID 5 internal drives (Apple Hardware RAID card) we are seeing about 270 to 300 or so MB per minute, all to an Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u PacketLoader. Could it be that your slowness is caused by a slow processor or backup medium on your Retrospect server? Is there a high load on your server while the backup is happening that could tax the processor or that could cause the disk heads to be seeking wildly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aschubow Posted October 4, 2005 Report Share Posted October 4, 2005 Retrospect 6.1 fails to resolve the issue. The UI no longer bogs down simply by having a RAID volume in the volume list, but it is still (virtually) not possible to back up the RAID. Performance starts at 50 MB/min and drops down to 12MB/min after a few files. This same setup will back up other drives at 400MB/min. now what? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted October 5, 2005 Report Share Posted October 5, 2005 Alex, Can you please start a new thread for this. It is getting hard to keep up with the details here. What is CPU and RAM usage like when backing up the software RAID? Are you selecting the root of the RAID to backup or just selected folders? Do you a notice a difference either way? Thanks Nate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aschubow Posted October 5, 2005 Report Share Posted October 5, 2005 starting a new thread titled "software RAID backup impossible" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveW928 Posted October 12, 2005 Report Share Posted October 12, 2005 Quote: Hi, Sincerest apologies for the delay. This issue will be resolved with the upcoming version release which will be available *VERY SOON* (unfortunately, I do not have exact dates). This will be a free update for customers running 6.0. Thank you for finally addressing this! I didn't realize this new update addressed this, but I will give it a try soon. I'd love to just go to Tiger on the box, but I have too many SMB related issues I need to test first... so this will be a big help until we get there. I'll also try to get us signed up for that support contract (on our Mac version.... we already have support on our Win versions). I do realize that the Dantz folks can't follow every thread here, but I was a bit distressed when such a big issue seemed to not be getting attention. Thanks, -Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amcmis Posted October 12, 2005 Report Share Posted October 12, 2005 Greetings all... My problem might not be Retrospect, but after reading this whole thread, it may be. We have been having complete GUI hangs on our OSX Server, spinning wheel and cannot do anything. If you use the Force-Quit option early, you are given a screen, but if you select Retrospect to quit, you just get a new spinner and cannot even get a new Force-Quit screen after. (Unusual side effect: Retrospect is indicated as foreground according to the menu bar, but other apps are on top, and though I cannot close other windows, I can drag them around on the screen. They move, stay on top, but retrospect is still on the menu bar but unresponsive. Weird! There is a "Preparing to Execute" screen in the background, but if I drag a window off it, the screen does refresh as if it is responding. I guess that's just the way the window manager works...) OK, the Current details: XServe G5/2GHz (single) 1 GB RAM OS X Server 10.3.9 3 x 250 GB SATA internal bays Bay1 and Bay2 mirrored w/Apple software RAID, boot volume. (AHA!) Bay3 as backup drive for Disk-Disk-Tape ops. One possible factor, often when we realize the GUI is hung, LiveUpdate has launched and is sharing the screen. (NAV Server 9.03) OK, HERE'S A QUESTION: Up til now, we have had to SSH in and issue a shutdown -r to get out of this. I want to be able to rectify this without shutting down. Exactly what processes am i looking for to kill, and in what order? And will it make any difference, since the GUI may still not come back? FYI, this has been occurring since we had OS X 10.3.6 and Retro 6.0. Here is a quick comparison of how much LaunchCFMApp is using in a 100 second sample: Indra:~ admin$ ps -ax |grep Retro 348 ?? Ss 0:10.51 /Applications/Retrospect 6.1/Retrospect/Contents/MacOS/RetroRunSL.app/Contents/MacOS/RetroRunSL -psn_0_26 479 ?? R 508:37.25 /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp /Applications/Retrospect 6.1/ 487 ?? Ss 1:05.36 /Library/StartupItems/RetroRun/RetroRun 13267 std S+ 0:00.00 grep Retro Indra:~ admin$ ps -ax |grep Retro 348 ?? Ss 0:10.52 /Applications/Retrospect 6.1/Retrospect/Contents/MacOS/RetroRunSL.app/Contents/MacOS/RetroRunSL -psn_0_26 479 ?? R 508:54.53 /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp /Applications/Retrospect 6.1/ 487 ?? Ss 1:05.38 /Library/StartupItems/RetroRun/RetroRun 13304 std S+ 0:00.01 grep Retro Indra:~ admin$ THANKS IN ADVANCE! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted October 13, 2005 Report Share Posted October 13, 2005 Hi Are you doing duplicates to the drive in Bay3 or are you doing backups? Are you using a file backup set? To confirm - you are now using Retrospect 6.1 right? Thanks Nate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amcmis Posted October 13, 2005 Report Share Posted October 13, 2005 Hi, thanx for getting back to me. Yes, it's 6.1 as of earlier this week, hoping it would solve some issues, but the symptoms started at the earlier versions of both Retro and OS. Before continuing, I want to stress that I'm not sure it is Retro causing this, I am also suspicious of Norton AV. If people think Dantz made a mess of Retro for OSX, try NAV. We use the 3rd drive for various type of scratch storage, so yes, it's a file backup. I did see some comments about the system overhead for that, but I was initially more concerned about the RAID comments. Any specifics I should know? If the answer is a definitive "Don't use file backup!" I would have to look into an external firewire, I think. As far as immediate crisis was concerned, early this morning we did try to sequentially kill all Retro processes, and LiveUpdate finally. The specific windows did disappear from the GUI, but we weren't able to take control, force-quit anything, etc. Maybe it's an OS corruption thing? In any case, we needed to do a remote restart and inconvenience everyone. *sigh* And just in case, even though it's really an OS subject, does anybody know how to reload the console GUI without shutting the system down? Some kind of force-logout from a remote shell prompt? Just checkin'... TIA! jth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted October 13, 2005 Report Share Posted October 13, 2005 Quote: I'm not sure it is Retro causing this, I am also suspicious of Norton AV Go with your gut; get rid of the NAV crap and see if the problem persists. >And just in case, even though it's really an OS subject, does anybody know how to >reload the console GUI without shutting the system down? Some kind of force-logout >from a remote shell prompt? Just checkin'... yourmac:~ yourlogin$ killall loginwindow will quit out of the current logged in user, and give you your login screen, giving you either your list of users or a name entry field. From there, you can log in as a console user. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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