On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 05:27:19PM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > Is it normal that when using the "tar" command to create a big archive, > the whole machine becomes unresponsive, e.g. several dozens of seconds > to do some operation (e.g. starting an xterm, or making Firefox react)? > > htop shows that there is still plenty of memory and atop shows nothing > special, except 100% disk busy of course.
It's the disk being busy that slows it all down. Normal. A hard disk can service perhaps 10-100 requests per second -- if tar is using all of them, everything else will be delayed. Solid-state disks can handle 10-70,000 requests per second, but they have their own tradeoffs including price and capacity. -dsr- -- http://randomstring.org/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference. You can't fight for freedom by taking away rights. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130228163828.ge27...@randomstring.org
