--bwlimit not working right

[John Van Essen]

On 17 Oct 2003, Rene Schumann <rene.schumann at gmx.net> wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> I cant get the bwlimit option working right.
> If i set this option over 400 kbyte per sec i still only get 400kbyte
> per sec, whether wich value i set.
> I try this option with a 100MB big file.
> I use a debian stable System with rsync version 2.5.6cvs  protocol
> version 26.
> Can someone tell me how i can this get working?
[ snip ]

We use --bwlimit extensively and have experienced the same 400 kB limit.
So you are doing nothing wrong.  It's just the nature of the beast in
the way that it is implemented.

Linux systems have a granularity of 10 ms.  Wait times cannot be
shorter than that, and are rounded up if necessary.

If you are pulling data (vs. pushing data) then rsync uses a buffer
size of 4096.

The forumla used to calculate the sleep time in microsecs is:

bytes_written * 1000 / bwlimit

4096 * 1000 / 400 = approx. 10,000

So attempts to use bwlimit greater than 400 ends up with a wait
time that is rounded up to 10,000, which is effectively 409.6 kB/s
given the 4096 byte buffeer size.  Thus the apparent ceiling.

There is a proposed patch to accumulate wait times to make it
more accurate which would probably solve your problem.  See this
thread in the archives:

http://www.mail-archive.com/rsync@lists.samba.org/msg07270.html

A corrected patch is in the next message (7271).
-- 
        John Van Essen  Univ of MN Alumnus  <vanes002 at umn.edu>