LBackup Performance

This page is related to performance issues relating to LBackup running on various platforms.

The '–whole-file' option may speed up transfers. However, in certain circumstances it could also slow down the transfer particularly on slow WAN links. Consider as an option for a future release.

One issue which has been noted on Mac OS 10.5.6 is a 'find' process which periodically will start.

  87749 ??       300:39.59 find -s / ! ( -fstype hfs -or -fstype ufs ) -prune -or -path /tmp -prune -or -path /var/tmp -prune -or -path */Backups.backupdb

Even if Apple's TimeMachine is not enabled or configured the process seems to start.

If you have many files within a backup set then this process (which seems to be related to TimeMachine) may take a long time to complete. While it is running it consumes system resources and seriously degrades disk performance which affects the completion time of backups taking place on the system. When the find process is searching a disk which is also a backup destination while a backup is taking place the performance seems to be further degraded.

This issue is currently being investigated. Additional information will be posted to this page as it becomes available.

On recent Mac OS X system releases Spotlight indexing is enabled by default. If you have a large backup set then in certain circumstances, the indexing will significantly slow down the backup process. As such, it may be worth disabling spotlight indexing for volumes with large backup sets. The spotlight page within the LBackup online documentation provides details relating to disabling and enabling Spotlight indexing for attached volumes via the command line.