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On 04/07/2013 12:55 AM, Jonathan Marsden wrote:
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
Jonathan:By process, I don't mean something internal with a process-ID. I mean the sequence of steps a person (and the software) goes through to apply updates.
Also, I don't think the problem is memory-related, because I have a Lubuntu 12.10 system on a 933 megahertz (single-processor) machine (which also has only 512 megabytes RAM), and it doesn't exhibit the same symptoms. It only happens on my slowest (450 megahertz single-processor) machine.
Also, I'm fairly certain it isn't related to disk caching. It stays in that busy state for a /really/ long time. I gave up on it after about 45 minutes.
When I use the software-updater (whose window goes away), I watch what is going on in the system using the task manager, showing both my own, and root processes.
Having watched the updating details window a lot, there are certain processes running that I recognize to be part of updating the system. Examples of these are mkinitramfs, mandb, grub (and mounting partitions as part of the grub update process). There are also other things I recognize that don't come to mind just now.
So I can tell (or at least, it appears) that the system is being updated. And at some point, a lot later, processor load goes down down to a typical idle-state, so I conclude that updating is finished.
I get no notification of completion.At that point, I try running the software-updater again, and it says my system is up-to-date, so I terminate it.
When I used the console commands to do it, I didn't see anything recognizable in the task manager window, yet the system remained busy for longer than it usually takes to apply updates using the software-updater. I gave up on it after about 45 minutes.
The next time I booted it after giving up on it, I did not detect any problems with the package database.
I will do more testing with it, and give more information. The "top" command looks like a really good tool, and I will use it next time, rather that the task manager. Perhaps it will show me more.
I will try it again (soon) when there are more updates to be applied. -- Sincerely, Aere
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