how to reduce rsync system usage

[Wayne Davison]

On Thu, May 26, 2005 at 10:52:41AM +1000, dtra wrote:
> the cron job uses nice -19 rsync
> [...]
> sorry, one more thing, on the server we are getting the files from,
> max connections is set to 1

Are you connecting to an rsync daemon or not?

If you are running a daemon, run the *daemon* as "nice rsync --daemon"
(how you run the client has no effect on how the daemon runs).

If you're not running a daemon (even if you're running rsync via inetd),
the "max connections" setting can have no effect because rsync isn't
accepting the connections.  In the case of using a remote shell for the
transfer, make sure you've specified that nice is to be used on the
remote rsync command by using the option --rsync-path='nice rsync'
(again, the client's nice level doesn't affect commands on the remote
host).

> when i go to top on the backup server, i can see several instances of
> rsync running

Keep in mind that a daemon will have either one or two extra rsync
processes in addition to the daemon when a transfer is active (1 =
sending, 2 = receiving).  Or see above for why the max connections
option may not even be in effect.

..wayne..