Snapshots

[Bob Johnson]

On 8/30/05, Brian McCann <bjmccann at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all...I'm having a problem using snapshots...which I discovered
> when I tried a system backup using dump.  I've got a 283Gb partition,
> and the system was trying to create the snapshot for > 12 hours.  I'm
> on 5.4-RELEASE.  Should this be taking this long?  My gut tells me
> no...cause it'd be foolish if it did.  Any ideas/suggestions?
> 

No, it shouldn't.  It appears that there is some problem with the
snapshot process on large filesystems in 5.4-RELEASE and perhaps
others, but I don't know how aggressively it is being investigated, or
whether a solution has already been found.

There have been several posts about this in the past month or two, if
you search the archives you might find better information about it.  I
remember there was conjecture about the possible cause (e.g.
insufficient temporary storage space for the inode list), but I don't
remember if this led to a workable solution.

- Bob