On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 08:47:46AM -0500, Zach wrote: > Do you know if it's expected for installing packages to take longer > the more total packages one has installed? In recent months I notice > sometimes when I install packages (sometimes one, sometimes many) the > machine will be in nearly unusable state while it read's the package > database.
> I'm going to start using the time command with apt so I can get some > hard data. My xload spiked up to near the very top for this entire > time and then when apt finished it went back down to the bottom. I > don't know if it is CPU or disk IO or a combination. I wonder if I can > do anything to optimize apt so it will stop doing this? > > My machine is a P3/700MHz. Well, Sarge's aptitude on my 486DX4-100 with 32 MB ram would hit swap but be useable (as in would give me the view within a couple of minutes) but with Etch (even with just a base debs install) would thrash and take about half an hour to give me a view. This would indicate that part of the difficulty is reading all the data on all the available packages. Note that on Woody, aptitude/apt-get/deslect whatever never hit swap. Once installed, the same manually-selected packages (presumably different number of dependant packages Sarge vs. Etch) would take far longer to process when installing or when processing a security update. Overall Etch (apt, even bash) caused the 486 to thrash too much to be useable. (runs great on OpenBSD). On my P-II 233 MHz with 64 MB ram, things are at least useable but I still noticed a great difference between Sarge and Etch in terms of dpkg, apt, and aptitude performance; it is far more sluggish with Etch and will totally thrash if anything else is using memory (e.g. X is running). It takes about over 1 minute from issuing the aptitude command to the point where the view is complete and its useable. Of course, on my Athlon64 amd64 system with a GB of ram and SATA drives, things go very fast (a couple of seconds). I suppose it would go faster still if the kernel did read from both disks in a raid1 pair instead of from just one disk. I'm guessing that when Lenny becomes the new stable (actually, after than when Etch becomes unsupported a year later), my P-II box will be switching over to OpenBSD. Just my 2c Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
