🚀 go-pugleaf

meyer@darkwing.uoregon.edu (David M. Meyer 503/346-1747) writes:

>	Does anyone know if there is a way to reduce the size of
>	BackupCoPilot Database? Ours is huge (like 200MB).

here's some general stuff.  you probably already know most of this
stuff, but maybe something will help you.  feel free to email me if
you'd like me to go into it more (but i'll be away from email from
12/23 to 1/4).

there are two main things you can do:

(1) speed up your expiration cycle.

(2) do a `dumpdm dir_rebuild'.  this does what some people believe
`dumpdm reclaim' does, i.e. it can punt dead records and free up disk
space.  unfortunately, it's cumbersome and relatively slow.  also, i'd
recommend a mapsize of at least 100 (i.e. `-m 100').  note that there's
a misprint in the dumpdm man page -- the default mapsize isn't really
`1', it's `100', and the max is really `500' (at least if you have the
patch).

here's some more info:

a filesystem with lots of little files is worse than one with a few big
files.  this is obvious, but worth mentioning.

when a tape `expires', it doesn't leave the database right then.  it
only leaves the database when rpc.dumpdbd receives a new `file #1' for
that tape.  so, if you have a ton of expired tapes and you decide that
space is more important than recoverability, do a `dumpdm delete' on
expired tapes.  also, if `file #1' didn't make it in for some reason,
you'll have problems.

as the admin guide says (i think), you should do `dumpdm reclaim' at
least once every three months.  however, this doesn't buy you any disk
space directly!  many people mistakenly believe that `dumpdm reclaim'
will make their database smaller.  read the man page for dumpdm
carefully.  `reclaim' helps on future updates.

- sam