Backup Central

Hello everybody,

since my backup partition is on a RAID5 which doesn't do anything but keeping my backups, I want the hard drives to automatically spin down (standby) when there is nothing to do.
It's working properly, I only have one problem: backuppc writes to the per-pc log file in $topdir/pc/$host/LOG.**** every times it wakes up and tries to ping (or nmblookup) that host.
It does nothing but writing one line in the log file that it couldn't reach the host.


As I'm trying to save energy and protect my hard drives from too many spin downs/spin ups, I want to prevent these unnecessary spin ups. I already moved the general log file to a different hard drive, but there is no option to move the per-pc log file (or I haven't found it). 


My question: Is there a way to
1) either move the per-pc log file (just like the general log file)?
2) or prevent backuppc from logging that it couldn't reach the host?


I already tried to cache the log file, without success. if you know a way to do this (without caching everything which is not what I want with a RAID5) that would solve the problem, too.


My system:
Debian stable (2.6.32-5)
backuppc version 3.1.0
mount options: ext4 data=writeback,commit=60,noatime




Thanks for any help


Till

Till Hofmann wrote at about 16:23:56 +0100 on Friday, January 20, 2012:
Hello everybody,

since my backup partition is on a RAID5 which doesn't do anything but
keeping my backups, I want the hard drives to automatically spin down
(standby) when there is nothing to do.
It's working properly, I only have one problem: backuppc writes to the
per-pc log file in $topdir/pc/$host/LOG.**** every times it wakes up and
tries to ping (or nmblookup) that host.
It does nothing but writing one line in the log file that it couldn't reach
the host.

As I'm trying to save energy and protect my hard drives from too many spin
downs/spin ups, I want to prevent these unnecessary spin ups. I already
moved the general log file to a different hard drive, but there is no
option to move the per-pc log file (or I haven't found it).

Are you really concerned about O(24) spin-ups per day? I wouldn't
think that a once an hour spin-up would add much to the wear-and-tear
on your drive. And if you are worried about energy, just decrease the
time to spin-down to say 1 minute. That will save more than 98% of the
spin energy... Plus if you have multiple machines to back up you are
probably spreading the backup load across much of the day anyway...

My question: Is there a way to
1) either move the per-pc log file (just like the general log
file)?
Not really possible without much hacking since the LOG files are
pooled and hence must be on the same filesystem as the pool and pc
tree.

2) or prevent backuppc from logging that it couldn't reach the host?
Code is open source and interpreted. Grep for the line that logs the
data and comment it out (plus/minus other lines that should go with it)

I already tried to cache the log file, without success. if you know a way
to do this (without caching everything which is not what I want with a
RAID5) that would solve the problem, too.


All that being said, preventing the logging still likely won't prevent
the hourly wake-up spin-up (at least in the absence of caching) since
at each wake up, BackupPC looks at the pc tree to determine aging of
backups... And reading spins up the disks as much as writing...

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On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 8:58 PM, Jeffrey J. Kosowsky <backuppc < at > kosowsky.org ([email]backuppc < at > kosowsky.org[/email])> wrote:
Till Hofmann wrote at about 16:23:56 +0100 on Friday, January 20, 2012:
 > Hello everybody,
 >
 > since my backup partition is on a RAID5 which doesn't do anything but
 > keeping my backups, I want the hard drives to automatically spin down
 > (standby) when there is nothing to do.
 > It's working properly, I only have one problem: backuppc writes to the
 > per-pc log file in $topdir/pc/$host/LOG.**** every times it wakes up and
 > tries to ping (or nmblookup) that host.
 > It does nothing but writing one line in the log file that it couldn't reach
 > the host.
 >
 > As I'm trying to save energy and protect my hard drives from too many spin
 > downs/spin ups, I want to prevent these unnecessary spin ups. I already
 > moved the general log file to a different hard drive, but there is no
 > option to move the per-pc log file (or I haven't found it).


Are you really concerned about O(24) spin-ups per day? I wouldn't
think that a once an hour spin-up would add much to the wear-and-tear
on your drive. And if you are worried about energy, just decrease the
time to spin-down to say 1 minute. That will save more than 98% of the
spin energy... Plus if you have multiple machines to back up you are
probably spreading the backup load across much of the day anyway...


No, I'm not concerned about 24 spin-ups a day, but if the spin-down time is set to let's say 20 minutes, I know it's not going to spin up more than 72 times a day. 


All that being said, preventing the logging still likely won't prevent
the hourly wake-up spin-up (at least in the absence of caching) since
at each wake up, BackupPC looks at the pc tree to determine aging of
backups... And reading spins up the disks as much as writing...



I didn't think BackupPC looks at the pc tree (e.g. it can tell me how old the last backup is without spinning up the disks) but I guess that makes it impossible to prevent the spin-up. I set it to a 5-minute spin-down (and therefore losing the safety that my disks cannot spin down more than 3 times per hour) as you suggested. That looks like the best solution to me now..


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On Sat, 2012-01-21 at 16:21 +0100, Till Hofmann wrote:
On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 8:58 PM, Jeffrey J. Kosowsky
<backuppc < at > kosowsky.org> wrote:

I didn't think BackupPC looks at the pc tree (e.g. it can tell me how
old the last backup is without spinning up the disks) but I guess that
makes it impossible to prevent the spin-up. I set it to a 5-minute
spin-down (and therefore losing the safety that my disks cannot spin
down more than 3 times per hour) as you suggested. That looks like the
best solution to me now..

You could try modifying backuppc in such a way that it sets the
spin-down time to 5 mins (or less) when it starts, and back to 20 mins
(or whatever number) at the end of the wake-up script. Alternatively, if
the disks are spinned down most of the time anyway, just add a
spin-down-command at the end of the script.




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