Package: unison Version: 2.32.52-1 Severity: wishlist Hello,
thank you for maintaining unison. My laptop has 2GB of RAM, but sometimes I want to sync directory trees with a similar order of magnitude of data in them. When unison scans the local data, linux has a tendency to swap out running application to free RAM for caching the data that unison reads. The result is that while unison is running, my laptop is thrashing heavily as the kernel loads back from swap those apps that it just swapped. I'm running with default kernel VM settings. Running unison under nocache (http://www.enricozini.org/2010/tips/nocache/) does not cause the thrashing and keeps the system perfectly usable during syncs, if a bit slower I/O wise, which is perfectly reasonable. I am of course the first to agree that the problem in this is not in unison but in Linux itself. The operating system should not swap out running apps: this behaviour is preposterous, and everytime I experience it a part of my soul dies drowned by its own tears. It might still make sense, however, to have an option in unison (disabled by default) that turns on fadvise cache hinting. One would turn it on when syncing big, seldom accessed archives like photo galleries or music collections, and keep it off when syncing the home dir with files that are accessed often. Even more ideal would be to be able to turn it on/off on a per-directory basis, so that I can sync my home dir and have the system cache everything except pictures, music and videos. Cheers, Enrico -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages unison depends on: ii libc6 2.10.2-6 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib Versions of packages unison recommends: ii openssh-client [ssh-client] 1:5.3p1-3 secure shell (SSH) client, for sec unison suggests no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
