SSH backup mode: option to launch smart removal "in the background"
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
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Back In Time |
Fix Released
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Wishlist
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Germar |
Bug Description
This is an enhancement idea.
I currently have a profile that backups my files on a home NAS, connecting to it via SSH. I also have smart removal enabled.
What I'm seeing is that the smart removal phase takes a LOT of time (I have many files, I know), much more than the (incremental) backup itself.
The backup process does not actually end until that phase terminates, so my BIT icon stays in the system tray for a very long time, giving the impression that the backup takes ages to complete. This also dissuades me from closing my laptop until the backup has finished, because I fear I may leave the current backup as "unfinished".
Actually, if I understand well how BIT works, probably it doesn't hurt if I shut does the system before this phase terminates (the last snapshot is shown as complete by BIT GUI and if I browse the backup target I see that the last_snapshot symlink correctly points to a complete snapshot).
However, shutting down my client system will certainly stop the smart removal process, with the risk to have to start again on the next backup. In the end, the number of snapshots to delete may grow a lot if the process is very slow and the uptime of the client system is relatively brief.
So, my idea is this: since we're talking about a backup to a remote system, which is most probably supposed to stay on 24/7, BIT may give you an option to launch the smart removal deletions in the background, so that:
- the backup process on my client system fully terminates
- the smart removal process actually continues on the NAS, without the need to keep my client system on in order to make it complete
The only challenge to make this work well, is that if a new backup starts before the smart deletion process has yet ended on the NAS, the new backup process should not launch a new smart removal job, otherwise this may interfere with the previous one (still running) and/or kill the NAS performance with many deletions to be performed in parallel. If a smart way to handle this is found, I think this feature would be very useful and relatively simple to implement.
Related branches
Changed in backintime: | |
status: | In Progress → Fix Committed |
Changed in backintime: | |
status: | Fix Committed → Fix Released |
:D Mauro, do you have some kind of telepathy skills? :D
I just added this feature two days ago! But didn't push it to the trunk yet cause I didn't solve the concurrent processes problem yet