# Cannot work as long as rsnapshot is working
**URL:** https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996
**Category:** Netrunner 20.01
**Created:** [March 19, 2020, 9:37pm UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996 "2020-03-19T21:37:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Pfiff](https://support.blue-systems.com/u/Pfiff)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2020, 9:37pm UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996/1 "2020-03-19T21:37:22Z")
Since some time it occures everytime when rsnapshot is doing a backup for me, that it is almost impossible to work with the machine. The mouse and keyboard is responding very, very slow.
After the backup is finished I can work as before.
I didn’t change anything in the configuration of rsnapshot an the backup-medium is the same as before.
What to do to change this behaviour?
Thx!
Dieter
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### Author:  [@leszek](https://support.blue-systems.com/u/leszek)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2020, 12:50am UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996/2 "2020-03-20T00:50:15Z")
Seems like the I/O is overun by your backup application which means the I/O scheduler cannot keep up and your system slows down.
There is no simple solution for this. There are some kernel options you could try like switching to the Bfq I/O scheduler. Though that is something I don’t feel comfortable posting here as it is very advanced and might not really fix the issue.
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### Author:  [@Pfiff](https://support.blue-systems.com/u/Pfiff)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2020, 9:30am UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996/3 "2020-03-20T09:30:47Z")
thank you for your quick reply. But what does does the reply mean for me? Go shopping during the backup? 🙂
Is it possible that to change the kernel itself might fix the problem? I’m using
uname -r
5.4.0-4-amd64
Ciao!
Dieter
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### Author:  [@leszek](https://support.blue-systems.com/u/leszek)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2020, 9:57am UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996/4 "2020-03-20T09:57:25Z")
I don’t think the kernel change would change anything.
Installing iotop to check what happens when the cursor is not moving can help to see which process is eating all the I/O and try to limit rsnapshot maybe can help.
Otherwise you need faster media.
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### Author:  [@Pfiff](https://support.blue-systems.com/u/Pfiff)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2020, 1:27pm UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996/5 "2020-03-20T13:27:54Z")
ok, thanks.
I don’t know how to write the output of iotop in a file so I can give you here only some facts of what I have seen:
first line: Kworker with IO\> 97% and prio be/4
followed by
rsync IO\> between 40 - 80 % and diskread ~30M/s / ~30M/s diskwrite and prio be/4
Does this infos say something?
Dieter
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### Author:  [@Pfiff](https://support.blue-systems.com/u/Pfiff)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2020, 5:37pm UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996/6 "2020-03-21T17:37:47Z")
Any Ideas?
Ciao!
Dieter
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### Author:  [@leszek](https://support.blue-systems.com/u/leszek)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2020, 9:39pm UTC](https://support.blue-systems.com/t/cannot-work-as-long-as-rsnapshot-is-working/4996/7 "2020-03-22T21:39:14Z")
So that means rsync is really eating your I/O and apparently you have your external SSD connected to a slow connection (USB 2 maybe) as it only has 30M/s
Correct me if I am wrong.
This seems to be the bottleneck and the only thing I can tell you is really to let it run in the foreground in times you don’t need the computer.