In regard to: Re: [Networker] Saveset backup works in a group and not in...:

We've found the problem.

As we can't backup the saveset /home2 we've tried to copy all the files to another disk (using 'cp' command). And after a while of copying files the 'cp' command was killed by the OS. We did the copy again with "-v" to see what's happening and ... voilà! The command was killed while trying to copy a big, big file. But a strange one!

The size of the file was (as per "ls -l") in the order of thousands of terabytes! Yes terabytes! But "du -k" and the quota of the user in this directory said that this was impossible (the quota is only 200MB). We've discovered that this directory belongs to an student that has some C programs in the same directory like "mycp.c" and similar. The code does some kind of read/write system calls.

The student is experimenting with sparse files.  Do a google search
for sparse files and you'll understand what's going on.

You probably have other sparse files on your system (they're just not as
big).  When NetWorker backs them up (on most filesystems), it spends the
majority of its time seek()ing through the file.  It can appear that the
backup is hung, even though NetWorker is still doing exactly what it's
supposed to.

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT 
edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure                  701-231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                             701-231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

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