Bug#685756: SV: Bug#685756: apt-xapian-index makes 256 MB RAM laptop very unresponsive
Hi Daniel/Joey, I can just agree with you Daniel. Personally, I would prefer to suffer speed and some search functionality to make any low memory system for wheezy work out of the box. I hope an acceptable solution can be agreed about and maybe already implemented for wheezy. Cheers Bertil Från: Daniel Hartwig mand...@gmail.com Till: Joey Hess jo...@debian.org; 685...@bugs.debian.org Kopia: Bertil bkronmailbox-deb...@yahoo.se Skickat: lördag, 25 augusti 2012 17:36 Ämne: Re: Bug#685756: apt-xapian-index makes 256 MB RAM laptop very unresponsive On 24 August 2012 23:58, Joey Hess jo...@debian.org wrote: Bertil wrote: (i) Debian installer: In the installer task (Debian Desktop), one can consider to exclude the package as default. This is difficult to do while aptitude Recommends it. Although the installer has stopped using aptitude in some places, it seems likely to remain installed by default. Aptitude still functions ok without axi: - some searches such as full text (?term) are much slower; and - ?term[-prefix] loses special handling of XP, XT, etc. prefixes which may break some queries, e.g. “?term-prefix(XPemacs24)” no longer matches. The XP prefix handling is not documented in aptitude, so I think that it being “broken” without axi is not a serious concern and can be fixed later. Dropping axi to Suggests should not be a problem, however it is still quite useful, so … (ii) apt-xapian-index install: In the 'Setting up apt-xapian-index', do not automatically start the background task ..rebuilding index.. since the processor will shuffling data between physical memory and swap and not finish the task. (iii) apt-xapian-index: The program could check for sufficient memory and not start the rebuild task if memory low or should not run at all. See #564896 which has some discussion about these suggestions. The (unimplemented) consensus seems to be to disable automatic index generation on low memory systems. Regards
Bug#685756: apt-xapian-index makes 256 MB RAM laptop very unresponsive
On 24 August 2012 23:58, Joey Hess jo...@debian.org wrote: Bertil wrote: (i) Debian installer: In the installer task (Debian Desktop), one can consider to exclude the package as default. This is difficult to do while aptitude Recommends it. Although the installer has stopped using aptitude in some places, it seems likely to remain installed by default. Aptitude still functions ok without axi: - some searches such as full text (?term) are much slower; and - ?term[-prefix] loses special handling of XP, XT, etc. prefixes which may break some queries, e.g. “?term-prefix(XPemacs24)” no longer matches. The XP prefix handling is not documented in aptitude, so I think that it being “broken” without axi is not a serious concern and can be fixed later. Dropping axi to Suggests should not be a problem, however it is still quite useful, so … (ii) apt-xapian-index install: In the 'Setting up apt-xapian-index', do not automatically start the background task ..rebuilding index.. since the processor will shuffling data between physical memory and swap and not finish the task. (iii) apt-xapian-index: The program could check for sufficient memory and not start the rebuild task if memory low or should not run at all. See #564896 which has some discussion about these suggestions. The (unimplemented) consensus seems to be to disable automatic index generation on low memory systems. Regards -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#685756: apt-xapian-index makes 256 MB RAM laptop very unresponsive
Package: installation-reports Boot method: CD Image version: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/wheezy_di_beta1/i386/iso-cd/debian-wheezy-DI-b1-i386-netinst.iso Date: Aug 22, 15:37 Machine: HP Omnibook 6000 Partitions: Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on rootfs rootfs 154082676 5548756 140819104 4% / udev devtmpfs 10240 0 10240 0% /dev tmpfs tmpfs 25452 264 25188 2% /run /dev/disk/by-uuid/1244a110-6ee7-4f63-a8bf-330c425ff71c ext4 154082676 5548756 140819104 4% / tmpfs tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock tmpfs tmpfs 50904 24 50880 1% /tmp tmpfs tmpfs 50904 68 50836 1% /run/shm Base System Installation Checklist: [O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it Initial boot: [O] Detect network card: [O] Configure network: [O] Detect CD: [O] Load installer modules: [0] Clock/timezone setup: [0] User/password setup: [0] Detect hard drives: [0] Partition hard drives: [0] Install base system: [O] Install tasks: [0] Install boot loader: [0] Overall install: [E] Comments/Problems: The overall LXDE install was successful including encryption of the swap partition. However, after the first boot and after a few moments, package apt-xapian-index rebuild it's index. At that very moment the HP laptop simply becomes very unresponsive. 256 MB RAM is not enough for apt-xapian-index as seen from below 'free' outputs, with and after removal (in recovery mode!) of apt-xapian-index. This is somewhat disappointing considered that LXDE should be the lean desktop and that other application like an IDE and iceweasel runs ok. Output of free and with apt-xapian-index running: - total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 254508 250776 3732 0 92 4324 -/+ buffers/cache: 246360 8148 Swap: 1991676 129112 1862564 After removal of package apt-xapian-index: -- total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 254508 225000 29508 0 20424 129328 -/+ buffers/cache: 75248 179260 Swap: 1991676 0 1991676 A few possible solutions in respect to the installer and the package itself. (i) Debian installer: In the installer task (Debian Desktop), one can consider to exclude the package as default. (ii) apt-xapian-index install: In the 'Setting up apt-xapian-index', do not automatically start the background task ..rebuilding index.. since the processor will shuffling data between physical memory and swap and not finish the task. (iii) apt-xapian-index: The program could check for sufficient memory and not start the rebuild task if memory low or should not run at all. Unfortunately the scarcity of really compatible laptop RAM is hard to find. I have included hardware-summary and the 'cat /proc/meminfo' for above cases. Cheers Bertil omnibook6000.apt_xapian_index.tar.gz Description: GNU Zip compressed data
Bug#685756: apt-xapian-index makes 256 MB RAM laptop very unresponsive
Bertil wrote: (i) Debian installer: In the installer task (Debian Desktop), one can consider to exclude the package as default. This is difficult to do while aptitude Recommends it. Although the installer has stopped using aptitude in some places, it seems likely to remain installed by default. (ii) apt-xapian-index install: In the 'Setting up apt-xapian-index', do not automatically start the background task ..rebuilding index.. since the processor will shuffling data between physical memory and swap and not finish the task. (iii) apt-xapian-index: The program could check for sufficient memory and not start the rebuild task if memory low or should not run at all. I guess I'll reassign to apt-xapian-index. -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
