Re: priority of find
Steve Lamb writes:
> On Tue, 09 Sep 2003 01:07:15 +0200
> Joachim.Klamann@t-online.de (joachim klamann) wrote:
> > Im using debian 3.0 on a laptop with 64 mb ram and 4 gb harddisk.
> > Processor is Intel Celeron 366. Every time I boot >>find<< is running,
> > consuming most of the power and blocking every other process. How
> > nessecary is find? Do I need it? And if I need it, how can I change
> > priority from +10 to lets say -10? And if I do this, will the system be
> > stabilly running?
Nice doesn't work very well here because find is hammering the disk.
So anything you try to do works passably until it wants something from
disk as well. Although, with only 64mb, it's possible that regular
processes are getting swapped out and block trying to swap back in
when you want to do something.
> This is updatedb updating the locate database. It runs daily. You can
> adjust this if you like but know that your locate db will not be as up to date
> if you set it to a longer interval.
It's nice to have the db update run, but the main issue is that it
hammers the disk bringing everything to a standstill. I notice this
especially on my laptop, a ThinkPad T30. This is a reasonably fast
machine, but the disk is slow (yes I have DMA on).
What we need is a way to nice disk activity, ala nice for cpu.
Jerry Quinn
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