Your message dated Fri, 14 Oct 2022 02:35:40 +0200
with message-id <y0iu3fogkjckk...@thunder.hadrons.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#245970: dpkg: [PERF] unpacking packages extremely slow 
on systems with <= 64 MB memory
has caused the Debian Bug report #245970,
regarding dpkg: Unpacking packages extremely slow on systems with <= 64 MB 
memory
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
245970: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=245970
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact ow...@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Package: dpkg
Version: 1.10.21
Severity: normal

Hello dpkg developers,

For some time now dpkg is really slow on a 200 MHz AMD k6 with 64 MB
memory. On a 1.4 GHz Athlon with 768 MB it runs fine. The difference is
much more than what could be attributed to difference in processor
speeds, so I believe memory is the main issue here. A dpkg process
easily uses > 30 MB. The unpacking phase is the worst, and by profiling
I found three points in process_archive() in processarc.c that take the
most time:

- the clear_istobes() call takes about 10 seconds
- the parsedb() call, this takes a lot of time the first time it is run
  (because it actually has to read and parse the entire database), but
  subsequent calls also take a few seconds.
- the check for disappearing packages also takes about 10 seconds

All those things involve looping over the entire packagelist. If the
pacakge list cannot be kept in RAM at all times, this will cause
swapping to/from disk and a big slowdown. If there are ways to remove
the need to loop over all packages or to defer certain things until all
packages have been unpacked, it would greatly improve dpkg's speed.

The numbers above are not exact, and the severity of this bug is normal
but change it as you see fit.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i586)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.3
Locale: LANG=nl_NL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=nl_NL.UTF-8

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  dselect                     1.10.21      a user tool to manage Debian packa
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-12 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

-- no debconf information


--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Hi!

On Mon, 2004-04-26 at 16:20:18 +0200, Guus Sliepen wrote:
> Package: dpkg
> Version: 1.10.21
> Severity: normal

> For some time now dpkg is really slow on a 200 MHz AMD k6 with 64 MB
> memory. On a 1.4 GHz Athlon with 768 MB it runs fine. The difference is
> much more than what could be attributed to difference in processor
> speeds, so I believe memory is the main issue here. A dpkg process
> easily uses > 30 MB. The unpacking phase is the worst, and by profiling
> I found three points in process_archive() in processarc.c that take the
> most time:

I think the amount of RAM mentioned here is extremely low for nowadays
standards, so I'm just going to close this one.

(I'm always interested into looking into performance improvements, as
long as they do not significantly impact the code readability, nor
current semantics, although currently I think disk I/O seems to
dominate the installation process anyway.)

Thanks,
Guillem

--- End Message ---

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