machine load

[Marcel Schepers]

Hello,

When I start a backup using star and monitor the machine load using top I see something I do not understand. The load average is 1.00 while the CPU claims 97.6% idle time. I have attached a screenshot. Isn't that strange, a load of 1.00 combined with that much idle time?

For the record, I am using a HP C35480A on a linux machine (Debian, 2.4.21) using an Adaptec AVA-2904 SCSI card.

Thank you for reading,
Marcel

[Steven E. Protter]

Backups are not CPU intensive, they are I/O intensive.

That situation is perfectly normal.

SEP

[Caesar_3]

Hello!

Intresting which tools you use to backup and
also which backup device you use that connected via the SCSI.

Probably it could take more cpu for doing the
backup process.

Caesar

[Caesar_3]

Hello again!

Sorry for didn't saw star you mean tar or
it's star some tar version, if so then
as in my first answer what hardware you use.

Caesar

[Marcel Schepers]

I am using a HP C35480A tape drive, it is an old DDS-1 unit. It is connected to a Adaptec-2904 SCSI card. The Linux SCSI driver (AIC7xxx) is part of the kernel, as opposed to a kernel module.

[Caesar_3]

Hello!

Did you ever check how much time takes to
backup 1GB?

The DDS1 is old ans slow so it's could be
that for work in the speed I/O of the tape
linux didn't need to work hard.

But made the check for the speed.

Caesar