Tuning Up My System

rbrownclown · 2007-06-16 16:42:27

I'm trying to get my Arch installation as fast (but stable) as possible. Overall, it's still lightening fast, but there's two things I think are in need of some tinkering.

1. Pacman 3 is slower then pacman 2. It gets slower as I use it more and more. I've already tried clearing the package cache. This might be due to the fact that I'm using EX3 as a file system (I read it's a little slow), but I'm not sure. What could be causing this?

2. Boot time is about the same as Ubuntu. Is there any way I can speed this up?

Now just a general question. What's the best file system to use?

abhidg · 2007-06-16 17:24:06

1. The reason is that pacman stores all the package data files in the form of flat text files instead of a single database. The numerous amount of small files are kept by the filesystem in different places as time passes; fragmentation occurs. Thus pacman gets slower. I've no idea why pacman3 could be slower than 2 -- here it's quite fast. Try running pacman-optimize as root, it copies the files somewhere else and puts it back, thus they are no longer fragmented.

2. Try removing some unneeded services. Maybe background some services, so that they start in parallel.

rbrownclown · 2007-06-16 17:40:05

abhidg wrote:

1. The reason is that pacman stores all the package data files in the form of flat text files instead of a single database. The numerous amount of small files are kept by the filesystem in different places as time passes; fragmentation occurs. Thus pacman gets slower. I've no idea why pacman3 could be slower than 2 -- here it's quite fast. Try running pacman-optimize as root, it copies the files somewhere else and puts it back, thus they are no longer fragmented.
2. Try removing some unneeded services. Maybe background some services, so that they start in parallel.

By background, do you mean put the @ in front of it?

Misfit138 · 2007-06-16 18:20:21

I just posted this in a similar thread:
Did you try this tweak?

/etc/rc.sysinit

add a '&' to the end of this line:
/sbin/modprobe $mod
so that it reads
/sbin/modprobe $mod &

Supposed to background module loading, may help a bit.

somedrew · 2007-06-16 18:20:49

rbrownclown wrote:

This might be due to the fact that I'm using EX3 as a file system (I read it's a little slow), but I'm not sure. What could be causing this?

Apart from running pacman-optimize as abhidg pointed out, have you turned on directory indexing for the partition /var/lib/pacman is on (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext … ystem_Tips)? dir_index really sped things up for me.

rbrownclown wrote:

By background, do you mean put the @ in front of it?

Yup.

raymano · 2007-06-16 19:25:56

rbrownclown wrote:

I'm trying to get my Arch installation as fast (but stable) as possible. Overall, it's still lightening fast, but there's two things I think are in need of some tinkering.
1. Pacman 3 is slower then pacman 2. It gets slower as I use it more and more. I've already tried clearing the package cache. This might be due to the fact that I'm using EX3 as a file system (I read it's a little slow), but I'm not sure. What could be causing this?
2. Boot time is about the same as Ubuntu. Is there any way I can speed this up?
Now just a general question. What's the best file system to use?

Cleaning the cache will not speed up pacman. Running pacman-optimize does.

qlus · 2007-06-16 21:04:35

Try to mount your partitions with 'noatime' option.

nikron · 2007-06-16 21:24:37

qlus wrote:

Try to mount your partitions with 'noatime' option.

You can also try nodiratime too

Arch Linux

#1 2007-06-16 16:42:27

Tuning Up My System

#2 2007-06-16 17:24:06

Re: Tuning Up My System

#3 2007-06-16 17:40:05

Re: Tuning Up My System

#4 2007-06-16 18:20:21

Re: Tuning Up My System

#5 2007-06-16 18:20:49

Re: Tuning Up My System

#6 2007-06-16 19:25:56

Re: Tuning Up My System

#7 2007-06-16 21:04:35

Re: Tuning Up My System

#8 2007-06-16 21:24:37

Re: Tuning Up My System

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