On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 09:55:56PM +0200, Ian Balchin wrote: > Hi, all, > > Shortly after booting up, machine probably had been off for 24h, > there is a flurry of activity from the hdd. I imagine this is the > file system being updated. A look at top, for instance, shows ls > being run and lots of other stuff too. This is a regular occurrence. > > At this time I was downloading the email when this happened (wvdial, > exim, fetchmail, etc) and the email download came to a grinding halt > while we had some many minutes of automatic operation tidy-up or > whatever. We don't get free local calls here, the local monopoly has > punitive rates designed to make them rich from internet surfers, so > this is a matter of serious concern.
If you are running anacron, like I do, since the machine is down [there is no reason for it to be up], then when you turn on the computer, just wait for a few minutes or so until it's done updating.. That is the easy thing to do... There might be a way of making all processes started by cron nice - that is make cron or anacron or whatever nice 10 or nice 19 process. Then all the children should have the same priority.. - Adam
