bzcat drives MBP crazy...

Question

bzcat drives MBP crazy...

My MBP got much slower than it used to be recently, and found the process bzcat is always running background and monopolizes cpu (always ~100%).
I just tried to kill it on the terminal, but it changes PID really quickly from one to the other (like every few seconds) and cannot follow and terminate it.
Since it runs with the backupd process, I guessed it may be related to the Time Machine, so I just turned it off but did not work well so far.

Does anyone know how to quiet the annoying cat?

MacBook Pro 17''/ Core2Duo 2.4GHz, Mac OS X (10.5), iPhone 4

Posted on Jan 15, 2011 4:33 PM

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jan 15, 2011 6:11 PM in response to galaksiafervojo

It's not connected to Time Machine, not directly anyway.

It's a UNIX command to decompress files for display.

Start up the +Activity Monitor+ app and see what the User is; also select it and click the Inspect icon in the toolbar and see what the +Parent Process+ is. That may tell us something.

One use of it is the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget that displays the Time Machine backup messages from your logs; if that's active, try deactivating it.

Another clue might be if you have extra-large log files. See the green box in [OSX Log Files|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Logs.html].

Also use the Console app (per the tan box there) to locate and display your system.log for the time in question, and see if there are any dire-sounding messages sent by bzcat.

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Answer 2

Jan 16, 2011 12:47 PM in response to Pondini

I opened the inspection window of the activity monitor and found exactly what you said.
It is related to the Time Machine Buddy and the cat is gone when I closed the widget.
Now my MBP is swift like it used to be.

Thanks a lot!

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jan 16, 2011 1:02 PM in response to galaksiafervojo

Great! 🙂

The widget is usually quite reliable, and of course handy. I've only seen that on occasion, when there was a problem with the logs (or, on an older version, when the 1st archived log wasn't there).

Try downloading it again. If the problem continues, it's most likely a symptom of something else wrong. If so, post back and we'll dig a bit deeper.

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