Mozy Backup goes crazy
I noticed this morning that something had been uploading data overnight. I saw that the Mozy Backup status icon showed it was still running, however, when I checked the status (see below), I was surprised to see that it had decided to try and back up 435GB of data! It is only supposed to back up around 9.3GB of data, so what the hell made it decide to to do that?
Unfortunately, I was unable to find out, because whenever I tried to run the Mozy config, it just sat there and locked up. I had to force-quit it, but something was still hammering the processor. A quick look using ipulse showed it was a process named ‘MozyBackup’. I killed it, but immediately it fired up again. Repeatedly killing it resulted in the same firing up. It was almost behaving like some kind of malware. I ended up rebooting, but it started hammering the processor again, so for the time being, I have had to uninstall Mozy.
Mozy for Mac is currently at 0.9.3.1 and Mozy recently asked its users whether Mozy for Mac was ready for being called version 1. I think this sort of episode shows that they have some way to go.
Update
Following Dan’s Comment below, I have now re-installed Mozy, and he is looking at the log files amongst others to diagnose the problem. I will post back here with the outcome.
Hi,
Just saw your comments about your problems with Mozy. First, I want to say that the auto-restart functionality is intentional. We ask OS X’s launchd service to keep Mozy alive. We are trying to avoid a case where a random crash causes your files to stop getting backed up. You can ask launchd to unload MozyBackup, which will stop the process immediately. The exact command is:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mozy.backup.plist
During the backup process, encrypting files takes quit a bit of processor power. Usually, we can encrypt the files much faster than we can upload them. So we allow ourselves to get a little ahead in the encrypting process, and then wait for the uploading process to catch up. The encrypt process will stay a bit ahead of the upload process the whole time.
The high CPU usage after your reboot sounds like Mozy realized it hadn’t finished the backup and tried to finish up. The high CPU usage shouldn’t have lasted more than few minutes — just enough to get ahead.
However, the other two issues you mention are definite concerns. If you feel up to it, I’d love to have you install the software again and send us a log file.
Regardless, I have added a month of free service to your account by way of apology.
Thanks again,
Dan Reese
Mozy, Inc.
I’ve just discovered that MozyBackup was using 99.6% of my processor power (I’d been having a noisy fan for a few days and decided to investigate). I actually didn’t spot it at first because it’s running as root, and I had Activity Monitor set to show only my processes.
I killed it a couple of times, and it seems to have “reset” it — it’s not using up all that processor power anymore.
Unlike you, I am trying to backup a huge amount of data using Mozy — but I have to say I’m surprised that MozyBackup was running like that when my little Mozy icon is grey, not orange. I would expect Mozy to be sleeping when the icon is grey.
Depends what you mean by huge amount. My Mozy backup now stands at 156 GB.
You’re making me feel better: I’m going for about 100Gb right now 😉
I am having similar problems with version 1.3.2. Mozy’s CPU usage will frequently peg at 99+% even when supposedly idle. It will even do this when there’s no network connection, meaning there’s certainly nothing getting backed up. On a MacBook, this symptom has the effect of halving my battery life. I don’t see any final resolution on this thread, and my experience suggests it’s still a significant problem. Did anyone else find out what can be done to stop this battery-killer (short of killing the process or uninstalling Mozy)? If it can’t be stopped, can you describe the conditions that bring about this problem and how they might be avoided?
Thanks in advance!
Same high CPU problems here and annoyance of not having a working ‘disable’ option (MozyBackup process is a CPU killer) left no other alternative, so I uninstalled Mozy.
AlexSM – not had high CPU problems for a very long time (several software versions ago). In fact not had problems for quite a while. My last problem related to the size of the backup causing problems, but I worked through that with Dan Reese at Mozy and that was resolved and my Mozy backup runs well now at 190GB.
I can attest that the problem is still going on. My Mozy is idle (supposedly), and still the MozyBackup process is consuming up to 99% of CPU. My Macbook is heating up and my fan is going crazy. Process switching is slow. It stops, fortunately, when I unload Mozy with launchctl, but that means that the onus is on me to reload it at the end of the day, otherwise, no backup.
Does anyone know of a viable alternative?
Fabrice – as I said to AlexSM above I have not had cpu issues with Mozy for a very long time, currently running version 1.4.3 (3-43575). Mozy is running at <0.0% at the moment.
Have you contacted Mozy about this? Dan Reese (@dreese on twitter) was very helpful.