improving deb install process efficiency
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
While doing an upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 I noticed a lot of moments where I thought, why isn't this done more efficiently?
For example, some packages have actions that need to be performed, databases updated, fonts re-indexed (or whatever). And the user gets only "This may take some time...". Meanwhile the CPUs are bored and in idle mode. (I suppose installing lots of tex related packages makes this more painful than usual)
Another example is when doing package install or removal (e.g. where grub and/or dkms kernel modules are involved) afterwards the grub process is re-run or the modules generated for all kernels. (As an aside, I get that kernels shouldn't be automatically removed when upgraded, but it should be easier to clean up older kernels (and its modules) after a newer one has been booted successfully, they do take up a lot of space and time when updating grub or dkms modules)
Obviously some actions need to be done before something else gets installed further along, but often it's just something that takes some time. Modern systems have multiple CPUs and bags of memory, they can handle oodles of processes at the same time!
Would it be feasible to fork off the actions that have no further actions dependent on them (and wait for them to finish before giving the user the "complete" message)? Doing the same for actions that do have packages or actions that depend on them could also be done, but I guess it will be harder to administer their forking/returning before the result is needed.
Furthermore, would it be feasible to, for example, remove several kernels at once and then do the grub/dkms thing only once for the remaining kernels?
And lastly, easier cleanup of older kernels would be great, because even though I usually allot plenty of space for the / partition and/or boot partition, I have the (I admit old) habit of making those separate partitions from e.g. /usr or /var or /home. It hurts when you then get 100% full / filesystems when you regularly run updates...
Cheers
Simon
| Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton) wrote | #1 |
| tags: | added: bot-comment |
| James Plate (james-plate-deactivatedaccount) wrote | #2 |
| Thomas Ward (teward) wrote | #3 |
| Changed in ubuntu: | |
| status: | New → Invalid |
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