by Ken Task.
Ok, trying to determine if the backups were faster - suspect they were. Empty log files normal upon successful completion of backup. Will have to research that 'orphaned' stuff. :\
But, this could indicate you have some other processes (not Moodle and maybe not PHP) running at the time of the backups are normally run that could be taking processing from the backups. So in server environment ... do you have any other cron jobs for other things running ... like the processing of logwatch or the processing of webalizer or the backup of all databases ... etc.
Total guess, of course! Dig around some more on your system. ;)
Oh ... next time you run a CLI backup ... have another terminal window open running 'top' ... you'll be able to see when the backup php script is run and you might see mysqld bounce in and higher from time to time as well. I have seen large course backups (PHP) peg CPU at 100% at times.
'spirit of sharing', Ken
