On Wed, 2006-04-05 at 14:00 +1200, Glenn Enright wrote: > On Wednesday 05 April 2006 12:56, Iain Buchanan wrote: > > meetoo! I've noticed it helps with cpu allocation, but not with the > > disk. If you're emerging something like sources, or openoffice, portage > > still gets too much disk "time" and other processes suffer. nice > > doesn't seem to affect disk access. > > This is surely very dependant on you specific hardware and kernel > configuration. There are some systems that just dont 'multitask' very > effectively. Also, sounds like you have either an older HDD or your > motherboard is struggling to keep up with the I/O requirements of compiling. > Remeber that compiling is non-trivial work for *any* system.
weeeelll, it's not exactly old - it's a 3.0GHz P4 laptop (Inspiron 9100). It could be a RAM issue - only 512 Mb. But I definately notice it when emerging sources, and then trying to switch virtual workspaces when I have, say, firefox & evolution & vmware running... even if emerge is niced. > Also check that your kernel is making full use of any features available on > you system such as SMP or Hyperthreading etc. As a point of comparison, I'm > running a P4 2.6 on an IS7 motherboard with SATA disks, and only under the > heaviest compilations, for short periods of time do I notice any slowdowns. but do you actually do anything to notice this slowdown? ie. are you changing desktops, starting other applications, etc? thanks for the tips. I'll check out the ioprio someone else mentioned... -- Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au> It takes a smart husband to have the last word and not use it. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
