Copying a large file system (again)

Tino Schwarze linux-poweredge.lists at tisc.de
Wed Dec 5 10:31:47 CST 2007


On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 08:23:44PM +0100, Tino Schwarze wrote:

> > > I need to copy the whole /backup/backuppc directory structure in one
> > > pass so that hardlinks are preserved. Or I'd need some tool 
> > > which could
> > > preserve the hardlinks another way.
> > 
> > http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/BackupPC.html#other_installation_topics
> > 
> > The section on Copying the Pool may help, specifically using
> > BackupPC_tarPCCopy.  If that does not work, you may be able to copy the
> > pool over first, then do the hosts one at a time and try to manually run
> > BackupPC_link.
> 
> Oh well, that should do the trick. I'll try copying the pool first, then
> use BackupPC_tarPCCopy to get a tar with almost only hardlinks in it,
> pointing to the pool I've already copied.

I successfully copied the pool! :-) It took amost two days. Now I'm
running BackupPC_tarPCCopy and watching the machines... it seems there's
still some glitch, this time with the destination machine (PE1800 with
3x750 GB SATA PERC RAID). I observe the following:

Everything runs fine, both machines have I/O (I watch using vmstat), the
receiving tar tells me about the files it unpacks (mostly hardlinks to
the pool). After some time, the destination machine slows down
considerably, doing almost no I/O any more with 25%-50% I/O wait (it's
got 4 cores, source has only one and a lot of I/O wait). Using netstat I
see that the receive buffer is quite full (about a meg), the source
machine stops sending data and is 100% idle.

Here is some "vmstat 1" output of the destination machine when it's
getting slow:

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 0  0   3044  17200   2276 1205492    0    0     2    79    2    2  0  0 99  0
 1  0   3044  17076   2276 1205456    0    0    20  3392  695 1666  0  0 99  0
 0  0   3044  16084   2276 1205456    0    0     8     0  779 1063  0  0 100  0
 0  2   3044  15960   2280 1205460    0    0     0  4956  613 1476  0  0 71 28
 0  2   3044  15952   2280 1205464    0    0     8     0  275 1070  0  0 50 50
 0  2   3044  15952   2280 1205472    0    0     0     9  277 1073  0  0 50 50
 0  2   3044  15952   2280 1205472    0    0     0     0  259 1069  0  0 50 50
 1  2   3044  15952   2280 1205472    0    0     0     0  271 1067  0  0 50 50
 1  0   3044  16084   2284 1205472    0    0    84  1020  440 1433  0  1 87 12
 0  2   3044  15836   2288 1205732    0    0   140  8166  812 2166  0  1 75 24
 0  2   3044  15828   2288 1205736    0    0     0     0  281 1115  0  0 50 50
 1  2   3044  15828   2288 1205736    0    0     0    88  281 1080  0  0 50 50
 1  2   3044  15828   2288 1205736    0    0     0     0  257 1059  0  0 50 50
 1  2   3044  15828   2288 1205736    0    0     0     0  272 1067  0  0 50 50
 1  2   3044  15852   2288 1205736    0    0     0     0  251 1044  0  0 50 50

-> almost no I/O done, something is blocked there. The whole machine is
slow (e.g. calling a man page, pressing tab in the shell).

I see one of the [pdflush] kernel threads in "D" state when this 
happens, so I expect this to be a buffering/flushing issue. Any hints
where to look next? Any kernel parameters to tune?

When everything runs smoothly, the vmstat output looks like this:
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 0  0   3044  16104   3100 1200360    0    0   648   160  571 1595  0  2 98  0
 0  0   3044  16736   3096 1199588    0    0   580   594  567 1663  0  1 99  0
 1  0   3044  16232   3096 1199956    0    0   480   539  499 1284  0  1 99  0
 1  0   3044  15736   3104 1200480    0    0   500   168  480 1377  0  1 98  0
 1  0   3044  16736   3104 1199484    0    0   580   512  585 1566  0  1 98  0
 0  0   3044  16124   3104 1200144    0    0   636   192  597 1562  0  1 99  0
 1  0   3044  15380   3104 1200880    0    0   684   160  522 1537  0  1 99  0
 0  0   3044  16676   3104 1199996    0    0   488   925  631 1840  1  1 98  0
 0  0   3044  15920   3112 1200540    0    0   580   220  518 1314  0  2 98  0
 3  0   3044  15292   3112 1201188    0    0   676   192  561 1416  0  1 98  0
 1  0   3044  16308   3112 1200452    0    0   612   561  542 1510  0  1 99  0
 1  0   3044  15952   3112 1201148    0    0   680   128  519 1483  0  1 99  0
 1  0   3044  16508   3104 1200236    0    0   588   689  606 1533  0  1 98  0
 1  0   3044  16012   3112 1200920    0    0   620   200  561 1482  0  1 99  0
 2  0   3044  15780   3112 1201472    0    0   636   224  575 1529  0  1 98  0
 0  0   3044  16780   3112 1200512    0    0   616   676  626 1493  0  1 99  0
 0  0   3044  16036   3112 1201248    0    0   620   192  559 1375  0  1 99  0
 1  0   3044  16788   3112 1200252    0    0   352  3676 1408 4178  1  3 96  0
 2  0   3044  16672   3112 1200804    0    0   244  3424 2099 5468  1  4 95  0
 1  0   3044  16548   3120 1201452    0    0   560   488  799 2012  0  2 97  0
 0  0   3044  15928   3120 1201824    0    0   428   480  489 2220  0  1 98  0
 1  0   3044  15432   3120 1202588    0    0   668   288  566 1977  0  1 99  0
 1  0   3044  16248   3116 1201672    0    0   612  1185  604 1942  0  2 98  0
 1  0   3044  15380   3116 1202376    0    0   632   192  987 1545  0  2 98  0
 1  0   3044  16128   3124 1201452    0    0   260  5061 2788 9731  2  5 93  0
 0  0   3044  16120   3124 1201816    0    0   128  3648 2655 12920  1  3 96  0
 0  0   3044  16120   3124 1202204    0    0   116  2400 1816 7882  1  3 97  0
 2  0   3044  15500   3124 1202616    0    0   412  1111  967 3616  0  2 98  0
 1  0   3044  16636   3120 1201704    0    0   140  5969 3263 14974  1  6 93  0
 2  0   3044  16016   3128 1201900    0    0    80  3656 2573 11685  2  4 94  0
 1  0   3044  15892   3128 1202320    0    0   304   128  395 1565  0  1 99  0

Thanks,

Tino.

-- 
www.craniosacralzentrum.de
www.lebensraum11.de
www.spiritualdesign-chemnitz.de

Tino Schwarze * Parkstraße 17h * 09120 Chemnitz



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