Max Polk has a good analysis. Partly to help google, I would add that on a Quantal 64 bit server installed with "Install a minimal virtual machine" option and 256 MB RAM, the command (simulating the cron job) sudo /usr/sbin/update-apt-xapian-index -v -f results in an additional 300 MB RAM usage (100 MB from swap).
I noticed this issue because almost every day I receive a mail from CRON saying: /etc/cron.daily/apt: Killed Looking at syslog, the kernel frequently kills it: Apr 13 10:37:43 regmail1 kernel: [325133.105582] select 1 (init), adj 0, size 167, to kill Apr 13 10:37:43 regmail1 kernel: [325133.105592] select 625 (java), adj 0, size 15923, to kill Apr 13 10:37:43 regmail1 kernel: [325133.105596] select 3915 (update-apt-xapi), adj 0, size 36048, to kill Apr 13 10:37:43 regmail1 kernel: [325133.105598] send sigkill to 3915 (update-apt-xapi), adj 0, size 36048 Obviously the indexing algorithm which was chosen is either extremely RAM hungry, or the implementation has a bug. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/655831 Title: update-apt-xapian-index bogs down system To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ac100/+bug/655831/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
