Re: Slow package database

[Loïc Minier <lool+debian@via.ecp.fr>]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2007, Christoph Haas wrote:
> It appears like apt-get/aptitude/dpkg dealing with the list/database of 
> installed packages is terribly slow at times.

 I think dpkg spends a lot of time reading all /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list
 files.  These are not big and this is typically in cache between dpkg
 runs, and I think this is the reason that cold dpkg runs are very very
 slow.

 I tested by stracing dpkg -i on a small .deb after sync && echo 3 >
 /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches, and from a 24 seconds run, 22 seconds were
 spent reading *.list files.

 (A subsequent run took in the order of 1 second.)

 Perhaps someone with elite dpkg skillz will implement some form of
 cache for these?  :-)

NB: I have 227524 files in 1801 packages.
-- 
Loïc Minier