Description of problem: New install of F26 and Evolution. Restored my email from F24 Evolution backup. After getting my box all set up, I decided to run an email backup. It took over one hour for Evolution to generate the backup. Prior versions of Evolution have taken 10-15 minutes to generate a backup. The degraded performance appears to be due to the switch from gzip to xz compression. The change does save a tiny bit on file size (4.8GB on F26 vs 5.1GB on F24 in my case) but hardly enough to be worth waiting an hour every time I backup. Maybe it would be possible to give users a "fast vs small" (gz vs xz) configuration option for backups? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): evolution-3.24.5-1.fc26.x86_64 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start Evolution 2. Have a big pile of email 3. Do a backup Actual results: Long delay for backup to finish Expected results: Less long delay for backup to finish Additional info: Here's a chart showing the insanely slow speed of xz compared to gz/bz2. https://www.rootusers.com/gzip-vs-bzip2-vs-xz-performance-comparison/
Thanks for a bug report. I wouldn't expect the xz being that slower, especially when using the default options of it. In any case, evolution only preselects the tar.xz, but you can still change it to tar.gz, in which case the tar will be compressed with gzip instead. It might be a pita to change it every time, I'm afraid.
Two questions: 1. How can I change the default backup option to gz from xz? I've looked through the Evolution preferences and can't find any settings for the archive format. 2. Are you suggesting there's some other explanation for the huge increase in the time it takes Evolution to generate a backup and that I should file the bug differently since xv is not responsible? Or are you saying that the huge increase in time is not considered a bug because nobody but me cares that it's so much slower? :)
(In reply to Steevithak from comment #2) > 1. How can I change the default backup option to gz from xz? See the last sentence of the comment #1, there is no option for it. It can be added, or it can be remembered what extension had been used and it would be reused the next time. > 2. Are you suggesting... None of those. _I_ simply didn't expect such significant downside of better compression with default xz options.
Sorry, I'm confused. If there's no options to change it back to gz, how would I change it! I don't think I'd be up for editing source and recompiling but I'm willing to try just about anything short of that to go back to gz if it's possible, editing config files, or whatever. Can you point me to any instructions on how to do it?
The is no option to change *the default*, you can still change the file extension to tar.gz and it'll use gzip, instead of xz. I'll add something to remember the last chosen file extension/compression type and reuse it. By the way, File->Back Up Evolution Data... opens a file chooser dialog and at the right-bottom corner there is *.tar.xz. When I change it to *.tar.gz, then the filename at the top also changes to .tar.gz.
I made the change in the sources with [1]. The only downside is that it contains new translatable strings, thus I cannot commit it also to the stable branch, thus it's a 3.28.0 material. [1] https://git.gnome.org/browse/evolution/commit/?id=65e6562eca
(In reply to Milan Crha from comment #5) > By the way, File->Back Up Evolution Data... opens a file chooser dialog and > at the right-bottom corner there is *.tar.xz. When I change it to *.tar.gz, > then the filename at the top also changes to .tar.gz. Thanks, that was the clue I needed! I tried changing the drop down to .tar.gz and when I did the backup it used gz instead of xz. I didn't realize it was so easy to change it. Backup time is back down to 20 minutes from 60+. (it's probably time for me to switch to an SSD, I'm guessing the difference would be a lot less noticeable - probably 10min vs 15min or something). Thanks for your patience, the UI is not always intuitive for the users who don't know how the code works. On other Gnome file dialogs that drop-down seems to control what files are listed rather than the format to save the file in, so it had not occurred to me to try it. :)
I agree, that's rather a hidden feature of the backup file chooser dialog than anything what would one expect "out of the box". Some other graphics software has the "Export" function similarly, except it explicitly says "Choose file format based on the extension". In any case, I'm happy it works sanely (waiting an hour for a backup is rather insane, from my point of view) for you again.