Yes, I know. This is the reason that I asked whether it would be possible to change the copy operation into a rename operation for the file: output driver.
It's not as easy as that: the header on a holdingdisk file is different
from that on a tape file (even a tape file on disk).
Moreover, the holdingdisk backup can be split into chunks, while the tape file (currently) cannot. Simply moving the file would not be enough.
It could be implemented as: do not use chunking, and because it is a diskfile, we could seek to the beginning of the file and overwrite the header.
But, if you say that the holdingdisk is a different disk than your virtual tapedisk, then you can't move without copying the data too :-)
PS. personnally I've never seen the behaviour you described. My backup server has a loadavg of 10 to 15 when the backups run, but the system still keeps very responsive for interactive commands, e.g. doing an amstatus etc. I do not run X on it (it does not even have a screen attached permanently). It is a 300 MHz pentium with 128 Mbyte RAM with Linux 2.4.20, with a 80 Gbyte IDE holding disk an 2 AIT-1 tape drives: not the fastest machine in the world, but still capable of backing up about 220 Gbyte in less than 8 hours in my archive run in the weekends.
-- Paul @ Home
