[plug] backups

[Patrick Coleman]

On 4/21/06, Peter F Bradshaw <pfb at exadios.com> wrote:
>
> It does run slower than it should - not a problem usually because I'm
> asleep at the time. The problem is that bzip2 works by taking a large
> block of tar output, compresses it, and then shoves the output across
> the network before taking another block.

I have read somewhere (man bzip2?) that bzip2 is a block compression
algorithm while gzip is a stream compression algorithm. Bzip works
much better when you have tons of ram or direct access to files while
gzip handles streams (ie. stuff being piped to it) well. I have no
idea exactly by how much bzip is better than gzip, but if CPU or
network bursting is an issue then gzip -might- push the data faster
(or at least, more smoothly :)

-Patrick