I'm doing a daily backup of a 10GB firebird database (classic server
v1.5) using a cron job on the server hosting the database. Using FC4
on a twin 3.6 GHz Xeon machine.

If I use:

/opt/firebird/bin/gbak -b /path/to/database.gdb restore.gbk

the backup takes about 30 minues.

However if I use:

/opt/firebird/bin/gbak -b localhost:/path/to/database.gdb restore.gbk

the backup takes 7 hours.

/etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost

ifconfig shows:lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:4158543 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4158543 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:700653166 (668.1 MiB) TX
bytes:700653166 (668.1 MiB)


I'm assuming that the only 'safe' wasy to do this is via the
localhost: loop, but I'm baffled as to the time difference and I would
find any advice to speed the backup up helful.

Thanks,

Steve