[pbs-devel] [PATCH proxmox-backup v2 0/7] improve catalog handling

[Dominik Csapak]

On 7/26/21 10:26 AM, Dietmar Maurer wrote:
> 
>> On 07/22/2021 3:40 PM Dominik Csapak <d.csapak at proxmox.com> wrote:
>>   
>> this series combines my previous catalog related patch-series[0][1][2]
>>
>> changes the catalog interface to be more concise, optimizes catalog
>> commit calls during restore, and implements a fast catalog for the
>> gui which only contains the snapshot lists
>>
>> changes from v1:
>> * only write snapshot list in new 'finish' method of the catalog
>> * add 'finish' also to pool writer
>> * replace pending offset counter with reducing the chunk_archive
>>    interface of the catalog
> 
> Now, during tape backup, users do not see any progress on the GUI. This
> can be particularly confusing on long running tape backups.
> 
> A simpler approach would be to only generate cache files for "finished" tapes (content
> will never change), while using the original catalog for tapes still writable. This should
> be much easier to implement?
> 

yes it would be simpler, but this does not completely solve the issue of
slow reads on large slow catalogs? (the last tape of the media-set can
still be so big that the reads take too long?)

also, the 'progress' they do not see is only in the 'content' view.
the task log of the running tape backup still shows the normal progress.

what about my suggestion to indicate a running backup in the content 
view instead ? so the user knows this is still running.

also what if the tape is damaged later in the backup? then the user
saw that some things are backed up, but in reality the tape
is broken and nothing is properly backed up?

also the progress in the content view was incomplete anyway
since we only updated that once every 128GiB (that can be
many snapshots) or at the end of the tape/backup

so if we do not want to update the cache only at the end of the 
backup/tape, i'd rather suggest to regenerate the cache on
each pool_writer commit, so we can profit from it even on
non-finished tapes