lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/05/2013 03:58 PM, Aere Greenway wrote:

> 13.04 exhibits the same problem as 12.10 (and 12.04), where the
> software updater window goes away, and there is no indication (other
> than by closely watching the Task Manager window) that the process
> has completed.

(1) Can you help define "the process" more clearly?  Are we talking
about a process (an instance of a Linux userland executable program)
that runs, and continues to run in the background and then exits when
its work is done?  If so, what is the name of that process?  Or, are we
talking about "disk access ceases"?  If the latter, is the issue simply
that of disk caching happening?  If the latter, would

  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sync

solve the issue by forcing all pending writes back out to disk before
the combined command exits back to the shell?

As a quick test, I just ran Lubunu 12.04 in a VM with 512MB RAM and only
40% of one core of my CPU, and ran that command... updated 12 packages
or so.  I noticed disk activity for maybe 3 or 4 seconds after the
command completed.  Is that the symptom of the problem you are describing?

If you have more time than that to investigate on your own system,
please try running top in a second terminal window during the time of
interest, and note which process(es) use significant CPU or other
resources then, which go away once "the process" completes.

(2) Other than being a performance issue, what is the problem with the
machine being busy for a while?  What actual problem or difficulty does
it cause the end user?  If they shut down their machine (cleanly, not
just yanking the power cord or hitting the reset button!) during this
time, does filesystem corruption occur, or something similarly bad?  Put
another way, what specifically is it that takes this from being "some
slowness in an older computer" to being "a problem"?

Jonathan