From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 2 01:52:28 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 309C116A4CE for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 01:52:28 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ppsw-4.csi.cam.ac.uk (ppsw-4.csi.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.134]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A31E43D64 for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 01:52:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rtb27@cam.ac.uk) Received: from rtb27.robinson.cam.ac.uk ([131.111.236.214]:61627) by ppsw-4.csi.cam.ac.uk (smtp.hermes.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.154]:25) with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-MD5:128) id 1D6J2G-0004SH-Eb (Exim 4.44) for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org (return-path ); Wed, 02 Mar 2005 01:52:24 +0000 From: Richard Bradley To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 01:51:45 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200503020151.45702.rtb27@cam.ac.uk> X-Cam-ScannerInfo: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/scanner/ X-Cam-AntiVirus: No virus found X-Cam-SpamDetails: Not scanned Subject: Updating the ports index is slow, but system load is nil X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 01:52:28 -0000 Hi, Sometimes (not always) when I do a 'portupgrade', it takes _ages_ to "update the ports index", without actually placing any noticeable load on the system. In ports/UPDATING, it says (of make index) "This may take an undesirably long time.". That would be fine, *if it were doing any work*. I try to speed it up by "renice"ing all the processes I can pin down as belonging to the portupgrade (is there a recursive renice for child processes?), but it makes no difference. Here's a grab of "top", after I've been staring at "Updating the ports index ... Generating INDEX.tmp - please wait.." for about 10 minutes.... PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND 65942 rich 101 0 37396K 27732K select 0:01 4.18% 2.39% kdeinit 62156 rich 96 0 52072K 40144K select 0:04 1.69% 1.56% kontact 557 root 96 0 102M 48316K select 15:39 0.88% 0.88% Xorg 67154 root 8 -5 7304K 7180K wait 0:00 2.96% 0.54% make 67520 root 8 -5 928K 800K wait 0:00 3.00% 0.15% make notice that a) there's almost no load on the system b) I managed to catch some of the make's and renice them c) It didn't help These two makes soon disappeared from the top of the list, leaving only background processes. It doesn't have any open network connections, so I'm not waiting for a remote machine; it doesn't have any system load so I'm not waiting for processing; the hard disk is (largely) idle, so I'm not waiting for i/o, but I am still waiting! How can I make it stop messing around and get on with it? Thanks, Rich