[Bacula-users] bacula-fd Instances Timing Out on `status client`, despite Running Jobs

[Lloyd B. <llo...@by...>]

Hi all,

I'm running into an issue with some bacula-fd instances and hoping 
someone can point me in the right direction.

In short: I have bacula-fd instances that are clearly running jobs 
(confirmed via strace), but they often time out when I run status 
client=CLIENTNAME. They only seem reliably responsive when idle.

Details:

   *     Bacula version: 9.6.6 (yes, I know it's old — upgrade is planned).
   *     Setup: Two hosts (`zhomebackup[1-2]`) running both SD and FD. A
    script at the beginning of each job snapshots NFS shares, mounts
    them, and outputs file paths for backups.
   *     Problem: These hosts struggle to handle more than 6–7 jobs
    effectively. Going beyond that causes a drop in aggregate file scan
    rates.
   *     Attempted solution: Spun up additional FD instances on separate
    ports (originally inside Docker, but now just running natively on
    non-standard ports). These new instances are /intermittently/
    responsive to `status client`, even with only 1–3 jobs. The original
    FD (on the default port) remains responsive, even with 6–7 jobs.

I'm wondering if this could be a shared resource issue or some FD 
limitation I'm not accounting for. Or is there a better way to scale job 
throughput?

I've attached a tarball containing systemd service files, FD configs, 
and relevant parts of the Director config, including an example job 
definition.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Lloyd

-- 
Lloyd Brown
HPC Systems Administrator
Office of Research Computing
Brigham Young University
http://rc.byu.edu