Thank you for that fine and detailed explanation... My understanding is that hfstar is derived from gnutar, so I would assume it preserves the gnutar behavior of not reading the files.
Does anyone know what happened to the "estimate" code for OS X? It sounds like this could help a lot, and in my case, accuracy of the estimate is not much of an issue... Thanks again, Dick > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Has anyone else experienced long estimates using amanda and hfstar on OS X? > > Is there any way to improve the speed on this? > > Why is it so slow when "dump" and "samba" are not? > > The way tar works is inherently slower then dump (or samba). > Tar needs to "stat" each file it will backup. If there are many > small files, and/or lots of directories, it can take a long time. > During the estimate phase, tar is run with the option "--file /dev/null" > and gnutar is optimised to not even try to read the files; it only > collects the statistics if needed. I don't know if hfstar on OS X does > the same. > Dump bypasses the filesystem and reads the disk device, and as such > can very quickly get an estimate; it does no "stat" on each file. > Smbclient uses the builtin "du" command to get an estimate (only > an estimate; exclude files are not processed). > > If it is really painfully slow, and I remember someone (Gerard?) > one wrote a very fast "estimate" for his particular case (no > subdirectories, only complete disks, no exclude file processing etc). > I don't know what happened with the code... > > > > > P.S. At first I thought it didn't work at all, but I increased the > > value of etimeout to 60 minutes and it then worked. > > You're still lucky, I once had a system where the estimate phase > took 2 hours 40 minutes! (Sun Solaris 2.6 with 18 Gbyte filesystem > with lots of small files. I moved the filesystem to a Linux box with > reiserfs and now the estimate phase takes only 18 minutes; to be honest > the content changed also a bit.) > > > > -- > Paul Bijnens, Xplanation Tel +32 16 397.511 > Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM Fax +32 16 397.512 > http://www.xplanation.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > *********************************************************************** > * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, F6, * > * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, * > * stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, * > * PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, * > * kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ... * > * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * > *********************************************************************** > >
