Comment 5 for bug 13671

If the schedutils package - which includes ionice(1) - is installed (and cfq is the active io scheduler on the relevant devices), we can run updatedb with a very low IO priority. This might improve response times for other applications while updatedb is running, as the cfq IO scheduler will permit their requests to barge ahead of those from updatedb in the IO queue. In theory.

The enclosed patch is a modification for /etc/cron.daily/slocate which will run updatedb with minimum IO priority if ionice(1) is installed. The effect of this is kind of hard to measure objectively, but someone who feels like scratching this itch might be interested in testing it.