> We experienced a strange behaviour:
>
> calling gbak via cron or commandline our backup of a 35 gigabyte database
> lasts around 4 hours. During this time we neither see cpu load nor heavy I/O
> load on the server.
>
> If we use IBExpert, Flamerobin, IBConsole or any other tool to start the
> backup job it is completed after less then 45 minutes! (Only limited by I/O
> capacity of the server).
>
> We tested with 2 gentoo servers - 1 with NTPL enabled, 1 without and using
> the firebird ebuild.
> Same results with ubuntu and 1.5.1 apt-package.
>
> With Firebird 1.5.3 running on a Windows XP workstation the results are
> similar but not this extreme..
>
>
> I couldn't find anything in Helen's Book (p.813ff) regarding this and google
> wasn't that helpful either.
>
> Maybe someone here knows why a local gbak is so slow and if there is a
> possibility to speed up the backup process?
>
> Kind regards,
> Ralf ter Veer

You can use gbak either as application that does the job directly
(i.e. reads data usually over network layer, which can have some slow down effect),
or you can tell gbak to use FB Services API, in which case gbak just tells
FB server to do the job.
So, do you call gbak with or without -service switch ?

Interestingly, there is some bug in Services components used by tools like IBExpert
that cause they are sometimes much slower (doing backup) compared
to doing backup directly with gbak (i.e. just the opposite of what you are describing).

Ivan
http://www.volny.cz/iprenosil/interbase/