homewood Posted January 30, 2008 Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 Here's the poop.... I updated from Mac(os9.1) Retro 4.3 to Mac(OS 10.4.11) with Retro 6.1.138. Searching the OLD storage sets is a complete DOG right now....say 6-7x slower than my 4.3 setup. Is this a known/seen thing...just get used to it searching your old catalogs SLOWLY OR are there any recommendations for optimizing these older sets for searching quicker in 6.1 (compressed/uncompressed...). I know the old sets are read-only in 6.1, but I could go back to my 4.3 if there is anything to try. Thanks for any responses. -Mike ---getting a Firewire AITe Turbo tomorrow, to replace my fried SCSI AIT drive....hence the jump to 6.1 for device support-- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted January 30, 2008 Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 How much RAM do you have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homewood Posted January 30, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 It's 384mb (same G3 that runs/ran 4.3 if booted to OS9) You think if I had more RAM in there that the storage set searching would be vastley improved? (I could try some more...) (I had watched the activity monitor during a search, and while the CPU was up to 90%....the available FREE non VM memory always had 100+mb showing....) but that could mean nothing I guess... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted January 30, 2008 Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 Retrospect uses a lot of memory, and OS X uses at least 384 MB of RAM just to run. You need more memory in this box, but I don't know what type of speed jump you will see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homewood Posted January 30, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 FYI - (testing on same 4.3 storage set here with same search criteria) Benchmark: G3/400 Mac-OS9.1- 384mb RAM - Retro 4.3 - 12 seconds to complete search Blah...Blah Results: G3/400 Mac-OS 10.4.11-384mb RAM - Retro 6.1 - 82 seconds to complete search. MacBook Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo) 2gb RAM - OS 10.4.11 - Retro 6.1 - 30 seconds to complete search RAM may speed it up, but not even CLOSE my OS9 search speed either way.....bummed...we search about a half-dozen sets a few times a day. Thanks, but adding the memory doesn't seem to cut the mustard in this case....OK, it cuts a little...but not all the way through... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted January 30, 2008 Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 Quote: G3/400 Mac-OS9.1- 384mb RAM - Retro 4.3 - 12 seconds to complete search G3/400 Mac-OS 10.4.11-384mb RAM - Retro 6.1 - 82 seconds to complete search. MacBook Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo) 2gb RAM - OS 10.4.11 - Retro 6.1 - 30 seconds to complete search I don't think the machines selected represent a good comparison. Running OS X with only 384 Mb for any purpose is too little. Sure, it was enough in OS 9; it's not in OS X. Running Retrospect on the MacBook Pro is using Rosetta emulation, which has memory _and_ performance overhead. To compare the effects of just RAM would take performing your tests with the same CPU and only changing the RAM. Or at the very least, staying within the same CPU architecture. Note also that some of the Yosemite based Blue & White G3 machines had flaky onboard FireWire, so moving to a 9 year old machine to try and get specific hardware device support might be an issue beyond the RAM considerations; buying a FireWire PCI host adapter can get around this problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 30, 2008 Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 Zork used to run fine on a PDP-11 with 32K back in 1980, but the world has moved on. Unix, especially a Unix with big GUI overhead like Apple's MacOS 10.4.x, is not Mac OS 9. I wouldn't consider running Retrospect 6.x on less than a 2 GHZ G5 PPC with 2 GB RAM. And never on a notebook. A G3/400 is, what, 8 years old, and is no longer supported by Apple for any current MacOS that it sells, for good reason. You really need to update your computers to run Retrospect. It's designed to move data, needs big buffers, and should be on your most powerful machine, not your least powerful one. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted January 30, 2008 Report Share Posted January 30, 2008 Quote: I wouldn't consider running Retrospect 6.x on less than a 2 GHZ G5 PPC with 2 GB RAM. Retrospect 6.1.x works well in our use on a 800 MHz "Quicksilver" G4 with all of 768 Mb of RAM, running Tiger Server. The server is only doing File Sharing and some DNS caching, and Retrospect runs only at night to File Backup Sets on locally attached volumes. But I'm able to maintain multiple full backups of the server's boot volume and data volumes, with the current largest Backup Set holding about 315,000 files. Of course this number is the key, and the original poster does not describe how many files are contained in the Backup Set being searched. Since it's headless (and keyboardless and mouseless) I don't watch it's behavior, and I have no complaints about its speed. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if this machine did some things more slowly then it used to do under OS 9. Of course, I can't remember the last time that it was restarted... > And never on a notebook. There was both a G3/400 Powerbook (Pismo) and a G3/400 Power Macintosh (Blue & White). We don't know which of these is in use here. I have one of the former (actually a G3/500 "Pismo" / 1 Gig / OS X 10.4.10) running 24/7 as a dedicated AudioHijack Pro server. It may be unsupported by Apple for Leopard, but I expect it to continue recording my Sirius Satellite stream for at least as long as Howard Stern's current contract lasts! Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homewood Posted January 31, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2008 Quote: Zork used to run fine on a PDP-11 with 32K back in 1980, but the world has moved on. Unix, especially a Unix with big GUI overhead like Apple's MacOS 10.4.x, is not Mac OS 9. I wouldn't consider running Retrospect 6.x on less than a 2 GHZ G5 PPC with 2 GB RAM. And never on a notebook. A G3/400 is, what, 8 years old, and is no longer supported by Apple for any current MacOS that it sells, for good reason. You really need to update your computers to run Retrospect. It's designed to move data, needs big buffers, and should be on your most powerful machine, not your least powerful one. While I appreciate the honesty of your opinion, I'm going to have to balk about the need to use such a powerful computer for such a mundane (albeit important) task. We do regular network backups of only completed jobs on our server...not much incremental stuff....as that is to another FW drive. Yes, I have some old macs that do just fine in OSX, and searching a catalog set (mine are about 350,000 files per) is essentially a search for text in a data file...the performance of which I can imagine is RAM hungry, and I will get more in there....(It is a Bw G3) - I have a G4/733 with 1.5gb RAM that I could use as well since it was pointed out that the FW was suspect on the G3. (BTW - the documented sys requirements for my version list a G3 with 256mb as the minimum config to use the software...512 recommended)...The notebook was just for comparison sake, didn't realize that retro used rosetta ....Is that what RetrospectX is for? (just heard about it). Thanks for all the feedback, it helps. Gosh, I remember ZORK...you didn't have to worry about framerates back then... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 31, 2008 Report Share Posted January 31, 2008 Perhaps our needs are different from yours. Retrospect walks our network each night, backing up all client machines and then our server to our tape drive with autoloader, alternating between tape sets (so each day's backup is a two-day incremental) and it's important that the backup window be shorter than overnight. We can only start a new backup set over the weekend, because Retrospect takes so long to do the first full backup on each client machine and our server. Lots of data, we never archive / delete. As for memory requirements, MacOS 10.4.x is a very different animal, with very different requirements, from MacOS 10.2 and 10.3 (and let's not even consider MacOS 10.1, the alpha edition). I don't think it's possible to run MacOS 10.4.x server in less than about 3/4 GB; adding Retrospect on top of that, plus a honking Mail Server and file server load (heck, the SPAM filtering load alone is depressing), well, 2 GB is about the minimum. You need big buffers to keep the tape streaming. And Rosetta, um, let's not go there for a server. We can only hope that Retrospect X is not vaporware; we have been needing it for a long time. It is what is holding up our migration to Intel Xserve (well, Leopard server is not quite ready for prime time production, either). It's what is so frustrating about Retrospect - it has so much promise, but it's very much a love-hate relationship. And gosh, do we need disk-to-disk-to-tape staging to shorten the backup window. Like most software vendors, I believe that Dantz/EMC/Insignia underestimates what is "really" needed for running Retrospect on a production server in a small business setting such as ours. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homewood Posted January 31, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2008 Quote: ...Since it's headless (and keyboardless and mouseless) I don't watch it's behavior, and I have no complaints about its speed. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if this machine did some things more slowly then it used to do under OS 9. Of course, I can't remember the last time that it was restarted... Are you just using VNC for this? Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted January 31, 2008 Report Share Posted January 31, 2008 Actually Apple Desktop Remote, which has it's quirks; my desktop monitor doesn't show the "About This Mac" window when it's selected on the remote machine, and Retrospect's Scanning window is likewise invisible. But since everything works as expected, I don't have to shoehorn a monitor into the closet for troubleshooting very often. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homewood Posted March 17, 2008 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2008 Just as followup (FYI) I did switch to a g4/466 w/512mb RAM. OS 10.3.9. SONY - AIT2Turbo with FW interface. Machine has worked very well. Still a little slow on the OLD sets, but not bad on new stuff. I do like the email applescripts as well (using the python one). Doing the VNC thing as well...slick! - Mike (homewood) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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