F11 upgrade - worse than Windows

[Bill Davidsen]

Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> Simon Andrews wrote:
>> I saw this too (but not for that long).  Going into a shell I saw that
>> anaconda was only taking ~2%CPU and that my load averages were low and
>> that no significant data was coming in over the network, so I'm not sure
>> what is happening over this time.
> 
> I may be wrong, but I noticed in a previous upgrade that in that
> phase the machine is disk-limited as it is executing a great
> quantity of sync() functions, related to the rpm database.
> 
> I would really like a simple way to turn the sync() stuff off
> when doing an upgrade.
> I know I know, it is dangerous and "libeatmydata" etc., but
> an upgrade is already considered a risk by me, so I always backup
> before upgrading; at that point, I would kick the sync() stuff
> out of the way very happily.
> 
You might want to run iostat and save the output during upgrade. Even on a 
laptop the upgrades don't seem to take all that long. Before I offer any tricks 
to make that faster, see if you can find out why it's slow.

You might look with hdparm and see if your disk has cache disabled, look in 
/var/log/messages for any reported retries, etc.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot