anacron running updatedb etc vs vmware guest no screen update - nice for disk

[David Timms]

Manuel Arostegui Ramirez wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 June 2007 16:23:50 David Timms wrote:
>> Hi, on F7,,I have vmware-server-1.0.3 installed {vmware-any-any-109},
>> and have a winXP guest vm. I start the vm when I boot my laptop.
>>
>> I bit later I return to the guest, and find it unusable - clicking anway
>> doesn't seem to be noticed, or takes a stupid {minutes++} amount of time
>> to happen. The guest has the vmware-tools installed.
>>
>> Meanwhile the disk is being continually accessed, and top shows that
>> updatedb, and then other tasks are being run. Having these affect the
>> normal operation of a vm guest isn't acceptable - especially since the
>> indexing etc takes about 10-15 minutes, leaving the vm unusable.
>>
>> Is there a way to config it so that anacron doesn't instigate stuff
>> while a vm guest is running ?
>> Is there a way to automatically pause the processes started by anacron
>> when a vm guest is brought to the foreground ?
>>
>> While disabling the anacron service would work, what I am after is
>> letting it be enabled, but play nice with the other guys - the work I
>> need to do.
>>
>> DaveT.
> 
> You might want change the hour of the updatedb process in crontab?
Thanks for your response, Manuel,

Would that help ?

By default anacron is set to be an active service, and it:
Unlike cron(8), it does not assume that the machine is running 
continuously.  Hence, it can be used on machines that aren't running 24 
hours a day, to control daily, weekly, and monthly jobs that are usually 
controlled by cron.

My reading of the config suggests that after (65..75)+random(68) minutes 
after the machine boots up, it will execute the following if they 
haven't yet been run at the scheduled time=04:00.
000-delay.cron  cups             mlocate.cron    rpm
0anacron        logrotate        prelink         tetex.cron
0logwatch       makewhatis.cron  readahead.cron  tmpwatch

It isn't that I want to disable these things from running altogether, 
just that they should only run if my machine is really idle - not just 
available CPU cycles {since most don't use much CPU}, but when there is 
nothing else wanting to do disk access. If the machine gets turned on at 
09:00, then these utils start to do their thing while I am trying to use 
the machine an 1.5 hours later.

For CPU, nice can be used to assure processes that need real-time 
response get CPU. Is there _nice_ for disk access ? {an aside - is there 
nice for network access ?}

DaveT.