On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 03:50:30PM +0200, Penguin Lover Nikos Chantziaras squawked: > On 12/02/2009 01:22 PM, Dirk Uys wrote: >> This has been bothering me for some time now. I have a Dell PC at work, >> Intel Core2 Duo with 4gb ram etc. Whenever something does a lot of disk >> access, the PC slows down to a halt? I remember some issue between >> Firefox and the kernel causing long pauses, but I've had several >> different kernel versions running. >> [...] > > It's a known problem. I have the same issue. But there is a solution: > start disk I/O heavy tasks with "ionice -c3". For emerge, this can be done > automatically by putting this in your make.conf: > > PORTAGE_IONICE_COMMAND="ionice -c 3 -p \${PID}" > > ionice is in sys-apps/util-linux so it should be installed already.
Hum, I had forgotten about this command. It would have come in handy a few days ago. But in the case of FireFox, wouldn't that make it worse? Also, what do you mean by known problem? What sort of set-up causes the problem? Is this related at all to the hardware used? Or is this purely in software? Cheers, W -- "Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs." -- Lily Tomlin Sortir en Pantoufles: up 1090 days, 14:08