Backup compression program customization (tar can be slow)

[stere0123]

I have noticed that the backup command takes a very long time to backup certain larger servers, especially if they have many files (e.g. a 5GB+ Minecraft server with Dynmap), since the script uses tar, which only utilizes one core for compression. As I have a 16-core server, using only one core is slow and inefficent, to say the least.

I think the backup command should be customizable in each server script, so that the command can be optionally changed to something else like 7-Zip, which uses multiple cores. This would also have the added benefit of allowing users to change the compression presets (since some users may find the backups using 100% of their CPU to be undesirable), and it allows them to exclude certain files/folders directly in the commandline (at least partially fixing #1163).

[dgibbs64]

Thanks for the suggestion. It's something to think about. I was unaware of the multi-core feature.

The backup feature was never designed as a full backup solution and I still recommend using something like duplicity. However, some users do like to use the backup feature.

One option for users could be trying the nice command. It should lower the priority of the backup so as not to affect the server much.