[Bug 655831] Re: update-apt-xapian-index bogs down system

[Alexander Korsunsky]

The whole thing is getting ridiculous. The bug is two and a half years
old (that makes five (!) releases), there seems to be no benefit to it,
so what is the point of keeping this package?

I realise that this job is started with a very low ionice and nice value, and it's *supposed* to not disturb the user because of that. But that plainly doesn't work.
It effectively kills my system for 10-15 minutes.

At least for my system, the real problem is a combination of low ressources:
If memory is low, update-apt-xapian-index starts using swap space (for me, "kswapd0" uses the most I/O ressources when u~-index runs). That combined with actual data being read from the disk and slow hard drive speed effectively makes a system unusable.

Also, the job is run much more often than it should. I already moved the start script from cron.weekly to cron.monthly, but it *still* runs just about every other day.
Also, what is the point of building an index, if Synaptic and software-center have to rebuild the index anyway?

This bug is a serious annoyance for people with weak hardware, and
effectively makes the Ubuntu default installation unsuitable for
netbooks.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/655831

Title:
  update-apt-xapian-index bogs down system

Status in Apt Xapian Index:
  New
Status in “apt-xapian-index” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: apt-xapian-index

  This is related to bug 363695 but is not a dupe - that has been
  "fixed".

  every time the update-apt-xapian-index occurs, the system crawls.
  Possibly related to the I/O responsiveness bug of bug 131094.

  The process is extremely intrusive, taking simple things such as flash
  video and throwing the performance down the toilet.

  While this apport bug was collected via a Lucid machine this also
  affects maverick.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
  Package: apt-xapian-index 0.25ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-25.44-generic 2.6.32.21+drm33.7
  Uname: Linux 2.6.32-25-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Wed Oct  6 12:32:35 2010
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.utf8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: apt-xapian-index

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