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On 11/26/2010 05:57 PM, Stroller wrote: |
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> Hi there, |
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> |
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> As per subject, what's the best way to improve interactivity with |
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> heavy disk activity, please? |
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> |
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> Or perhaps a better question would be: what approaches are |
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> available? |
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>[...] |
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> |
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> But I have also heard of `ionice` in the past: |
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> http://linux.die.net/man/1/ionice |
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> |
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> I've never used that - in fact, I can't recall ever having to use the |
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> regular `nice` - but I think maybe I should consider it. |
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|
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'nice' is for CPU time. 'ionice' is for disk I/O time. So yes, it |
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helps a lot with heavy disk tasks if you run them -c3. This is why |
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Portage has support for ionice (PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND). There's also |
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'schedtool' (sys-process/schedtool). |
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|
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The way I solved the I/O problems is to use the sys-kernel/ck-sources |
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kernel (2.6.36-r3). It shouldn't be necessary to use ionice and |
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schedtool for most tasks, but I use it for portage with this in make.conf: |
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|
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PORTAGE_NICENESS=19 |
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PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND="sh -c \"schedtool -D \${PID}; ionice -c 3 -p |
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\${PID}\"" |
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|
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But you can use this method for everything you want. Running something |
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with nice -19, ionice -c3 and schedtool -D should make it pretty much |
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invisible; it should have zero impact on interactivity. At least that's |
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the case here when using sys-kernel/ck-sources. |
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