Hi everyone,
I've pushed an update to backuppc-find.sh (a CLI search wrapper around
BackupPC_ls for BackupPC v4) with several performance and usability
improvements:
1. Parallel Multi-Core Processing (-j / --jobs)
Searches across hosts and historical backups now run concurrently across
multiple CPU cores rather than sequentially. On multi-host searches,
this cuts total execution time significantly (typically 2x–3x faster or
more).
By default, the script detects and utilizes all available CPU cores via
nproc.
Throttling CPU Load: On servers with dozens of hosts or large historical
catalogs, running wide open across every core can spike CPU load. You
can limit concurrency to keep server load in check using the -j (or
--jobs / --max-cores) option:
# Limit search to 2 cores
sudo -u backuppc /usr/share/backuppc/bin/backuppc-find.sh -j 2 all "\.ods$"
2. Grouped Output by Host
With parallel execution, standard terminal output would normally
interleave lines from different hosts as they finish. Results are now
buffered per host using a temporary scratch directory in /tmp, so output
always prints in clean, contiguous host blocks.
3. Natural Regex End-of-Line Matching ($ Anchor)BackupPC_ls prints a
trailing MD5 checksum at the end of each line, which previously required
appending a trailing space to patterns (e.g., "\.sh ") to avoid matching
false positives. The script now strips that trailing checksum before
filtering, allowing you to use standard regex anchors like $ cleanly:
# Example search for all *.sh (bash scripts) in a users home directory
across all hosts
sudo -u backuppc /usr/share/backuppc/bin/backuppc-find.sh all
"/home/user/[^/]+\.sh$"
The updated script and README are available on
GitHub:https://github.com/wfahren/BackupPC_find_file
Feedback and suggestions are welcome!
Thanks,
Bill
On 11/8/26 6:54 AM, G.W. Haywood wrote:
Hi there,
On Sat, 7 Nov 2026, kosowsky wrote:
I find that 'backuppcfs.pl' (BackupPC FUSE filesystem) is INFINITELY
more powerful and useful than BackuPC_ls or any other official tool
for finding and reading files in BackupPC.
I have long thought that this *simple* script should be added to the
standard BackupPC distro as it is so incredibly powerful and useful.
IIRC I already asked you a couple of times if you'd add it to the Wiki
but that doesn't seem to have happened. :(
...
... @GEG - what do you think about adding it?
Assuming you mean @GED, now that I'm beginning to see a way out of the
rsync-bpc woods it sounds like a reasonable idea. :)
Looking at the history on the mailing list I've been a little concerned
that people who have tried to use it seem to have some trouble with it.
If we can get it to the stage where it will Just Work [TM] (most of the
time:) then I think it would make a very useful addition to the stable.
See Gihub issue #543, which I've just re-opened.
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