Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: mlocate
In the course of doing some numerical computations, I've created several
tens of millions of small files. (If you're curious, they are a cache
of intermediate results; this computation runs for several weeks. And,
no, the cache couldn't be drastically smaller without impacting
performance.) During that time, I started wondering why the heck my
system 's performance was so poor: it would be running it's disk all the
time, but nothing that showed up on "top" was doing that much disk
activity.
Anyway, it turned out to be updatedb.mlocate grinding away, taking
nearly 24 hours to scan my disk. That's fine -- I fixed it by tweaking
the configuration file -- but it's hardly the first program you think of
checking when your system grinds to a halt. Nor does it really show up
as active on "top" because it uses very little CPU time.
Anyhow, life would be more pleasant if updatedb.mlocate recognized it
was well outside the bounds of normal operation and sent an e-mail, or
left a message in syslog. Something like "mlocate.updatedb still
running after 2 hours: either you have a lot of files to index or
/etc/updatedb.conf may be misconfigured." One of the configuration
options would be the warning timeout interval.
Since mlocate isn't used intensively, and since it's run once per day,
the timeout shouldn't be set too high: I'd recommend 2 hours.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: mlocate 0.22.2-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-28.50-generic 2.6.35.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Apr 13 09:08:01 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
ProcEnviron:
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
PATH=(custom, user)
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: mlocate
** Affects: mlocate (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Tags: amd64 apport-bug maverick
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/759561
Title:
updatedb.mlocate should warn if it takes too long / time out
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