rawhide report: 20050417 changes

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 4/17/05, Kyrre Ness Sjobak <kyrre at solution-forge.net> wrote:
> It can definatly be annoying for stationary systems as well, especially
> those who isn't booted to often. Every time you try to use it, it gets
> überslow...

Let's be clear. Having slocate updating on or not is not the real
problem associated with bootup... the problem is anacron and anacron's
default configuration. The reason why systems get slow on boot is
because of anacron being configured to run the exact same things as
the traditional cron. Bootup slowness can be prevented by changing how
anacron is configured by default without disabling slocate database
updating in the nightly cronscripts that run for always-on systems.

Sure, slocate is the most noticable script that runs at bootup when
anacron is enabled... but lets face facts, most of the scripts anacron
is configured to run by default have the ability to cause slowness
because the end up doing disk i/o. Instead of focusing on the single
script, anacron as a concept needs to be rethought. Is anacron serving
any segment of the userbase well? Is anacron doing anything worthwhile
by default for laptop users?  Take a hard look at what anacron is
doing at bootup.. which of those scripts do you NEED to run at
bootup..on a lappy? Is it really appropriate for anacron to be running
logrotate? or tmpwatch? or the rpm log creation script?  These things
aren't as intensive as slocate sure, but if the goal is get laptop
users the best on boot experience as possible.. why is anacron really
running any of these scripts?  Why is anacron configured by default
with exactly the same set of tasks as traditional cron?

The default configurations of anacron and vixie-cron need to be
separated so that on-boot activities can be tuned as needed while
still providing always on systems with full daily script facilities.

-jef