Opensuse 11.1 (Gnome) Home Server, RAID 1, Back in Time (Backup).
Help!
CPU usage rises to 100% despite being idle. “Top” indicates tar and y2base are eating up the resources. When I kill tar/PID in “Top” CPU drops to 0%.
What is causing the high CPU usage and how do I fix it? Any advise would be appreciated.
Note: Screensaver disabled, no problems with Xorg, remote access is fine, all updates in place… server up and running smoothly for 1 Yr.
Obviously tar uses this. What is that tar supposed to do? Maybe it is just working hard fot you to do what you asked it to do. Or do you fear it run into a tight loop?
Edit: I see this is your first post here. Welcome to the Forums!
Thanks for your reply hcw and welcoming me to the forum.
I’m not very familiar with the tar command and I do fear that something is looping in the background but I’m struggling to identify what it could be. I’m wondering if it has something to do with the local Back in Time package which is automatically set to backup my server files at midnight… never had an issue with this until recently. Any further thoughts/comments would be appreciated.
userpdq wrote:
> Opensuse 11.1 (Gnome) Home Server, RAID 1, Back in Time (Backup).
>
> Help!
i’m with Henk here: tar is a compressing and archiving tool which Back
in Time is probably using to do the backups you asked it to do…
> CPU usage rises to 100% despite being idle. “Top” indicates tar and
> y2base are eating up the resources. When I kill tar/PID in “Top” CPU
> drops to 0%.
and, y2base is a program to fetch security and other updates from the
openSUSE repo…it can be turned off forever, but then you never get
the updates you need…
both of those are (probably) set up to do very little until nothing
else is going on (that is, if your ‘server’ is serving something to a
net user then both the backup and updater probably falls silent…BUT,
when it see the machine is idle, tar and y2base GET BUSY WORKING, and
could easily go to 100% CPU…no problem since nothing else is going
on…)
> What is causing the high CPU usage and how do I fix it? Any advise
> would be appreciated.
tar and y2base…you could turn off your backup program and update
programs, but why??
what is your ‘server’ serving? has it stopped serving when tar and
openSUSE Updater are busy?
> Note: Screensaver disabled, no problems with Xorg, remote access is
> fine, all updates in place… server up and running smoothly for 1 Yr.
if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…
–
palladium
Like palladium (and like you) I am thinking of Back in Time. When it runs you could see (with ps -ef) who is the parent of the tar PID (and further upwards) to check this.
For the moment we will suppose it is Back in Time. As you say it worked OK already for a longer amount of time (months I mean), please try to call back in your mind all recent changes in the file structure that is to be backed up. Like new database added, new structure of directories, symbolic links (they can loop when you are not coutious), etc.
Also try to investigate what is already done during backup until you killed it (backup fiiles generated or missing). Any logging of the backup? Switch on as much as logging as possible at next midnight run, etc.
Just suggestions for you to help in error searching.
palladium,
Thanks for the feedback and educating me about tar & y2base. Re: tar doing what Back In Time was asked to do… not likely. The settings I have for Back In Time have not changed since I configured it 1 yr ago. Maybe I got a bug from d/l recent updates.
Still puzzled.
**Like palladium (and like you) I am thinking of Back in Time. When it runs you could see (with ps -ef) who is the parent of the tar PID (and further upwards) to check this.
Thanks hcw… good advise. I’ll see what happens after midnight. I appreciate the help!
For the moment we will suppose it is Back in Time. As you say it worked OK already for a longer amount of time (months I mean), please try to call back in your mind all recent changes in the file structure that is to be backed up. Like new database added, new structure of directories, symbolic links (they can loop when you are not coutious), etc.
Also try to investigate what is already done during backup until you killed it (backup fiiles generated or missing). Any logging of the backup? Switch on as much as logging as possible at next midnight run, etc.
Just suggestions for you to help in error searching.
Henk van Velden **
@userpdq
LOL, why do you have the signature of Henk? Is your name Henk van Velden too? And why are you all writing in blue? Color blindness?
rotfl!
LOL… Slip of the mouse. High CPU usage has got my head spinning. Even still, Linux ROCKS!!!
userpdq wrote:
> Opensuse 11.1 (Gnome) Home Server, RAID 1, Back in Time (Backup).
>
> Help!
>
> CPU usage rises to 100% despite being idle. “Top” indicates tar and
> y2base are eating up the resources. When I kill tar/PID in “Top” CPU
> drops to 0%.
>
> What is causing the high CPU usage and how do I fix it? Any advise
> would be appreciated.
>
> Note: Screensaver disabled, no problems with Xorg, remote access is
> fine, all updates in place… server up and running smoothly for 1 Yr.
My guess is you’ve enabled backup in YaST. It will tar your files to a
backup location.
Kevin Miller - http://www.alaska.net/~atftb
Juneau, Alaska
In a recent survey, 7 out of 10 hard drives preferred Linux
Registered Linux User No: 307357, http://counter.li.org
What about the possibilty that you are running tar and that the input to your archive includes the location to which the output from the tar process is sent…that would create a loop that would logically never terminate?
And I probably should not mention this, but as it sounded as if you didn’t know what tar did, you should read ‘man tar’, if you haven’t done that already.