> I have been using Amanda to backup 2-3 TB of disk to a Quantum tape
> library SDLT600.
> The data does get backed up, but, after each DLE, there seems to be a
> very long pause (hour or more) before the next DLE starts backing up.
>  In addition, the load on the system is above 4.  From top -ci:
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  5739 root      17   0     0    0    0 R 99.9  0.0  13074:45 [jfsCommit]
> 21176 amanda    18   0  9448 7976 7260 R  3.7  0.4 467:43.62 taper conf
> 17646 amanda    16   0  2056 1020  752 R  0.3  0.0   0:00.53 top -ci
>     4 root      RT   0     0    0    0 R  0.0  0.0   0:04.50 [migration/1]
>     7 root      10  -5     0    0    0 R  0.0  0.0   0:29.73 [events/1]
>
>
> The system is quite responsive, but I cannot determine why the pauses
> occur.  The log file shows that the pause occurs after the last CHUNK
> is processed for a DLE, and the CHUNKSUCCESS is completed.
> For example:
> ...
Just a note, I figured out what was going on here. 
For those who may run into the same issues:
The delays are due to amanda creating a splitdump_buffer file before
writing to tape.  jfscommit is consuming load because it is writing this
splitdump file.
The delay is longer for large DLE's, since it takes more time to create
multiGB files.  These files are being created on the same file system as
the DLE, so it tends to be slow.
I am going to add a second local disk which should help...